Bad News - Hunters Nerfed and AoEs Under Scrutiny

[accretion]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/13275172587-upcoming-hhunter-changes.html

Many of you have probably seen this already, but it makes me VERY nervous. I think some of the Hunter changes were probably necessary, but the massive Volley nerf could take away the 5-box AoE viability. Thankfully, I hadn't gotten too used to Volley yet on my Hunter/Priest crew, but a 15% across-the-board nerf to pet dps kinda sucks. The growl improvement helps, as does the Kill Shot CD reduction, but overall it's a huge nerf to the BM spec and will set my group back a lot.

In addition, I've recently rolled up a Pally/4xPriest group and a 5xBoomkin group that both rely on AoE for primary damage. If they implement a similar 30% nerf on AoE abilities, these groups go from instance-viable to "why bother?" in a big hurry. I was really excited about the 3.0 improvements because they created a ton of new options for MBers, but if

One other observation: the language in the last few blue posts seems to indicate to me that they're tuning a lot of these changes off of max-buff raid situations. The end result is that the "average" player (or MBer) could take a bigger hit (relatively speaking) because we typically don't benefit from raid buffs or stacking. Personally, I'd much rather see a reduction in buff effectiveness than these sweeping nerfs to specific classes and talent builds. Seems a bit heavy-handed.

[Dominian]

Well aoe in general is VERY high and aoe tanking might be abit to easy if you ask me.. (even thought its nice for us boxers)

Trash in instances is generaly a joke and with all the talents we have no, no one cc's anymore.

I looked forward to getting HEX just to realise that nearly NEVER need it.

Sure its VERY nice when your undergeared in instances like UK were some of the trash pulls can be thought and i LOVE that it doesnt break as fast as sheep. The range sucks but oh well there are corners! :)

[Boylston]

Volley is too good right now. Way too good. If they try a 30% base damage nerf and then maybe realize they're too aggressive and make it just 15-20% cut, I think we're still going to be winners.

The rest of the hunter nerfs/buffs are all pretty decent, if you ask me. The class is posting insane DPS numbers by folks in marginal gear. BM pets, for one, are doing way too much damage, IMO. It is not uncommon for my Gorillas to out DPS their hunter owners when I'm instancing with them.

It's very early, some of their buffs are nice as well (if they fix a few issues with Deterrence, we could do MUCH better in arenas), and I have no doubt there will be some balancing of things before the changes go live. I'd rather be well-balanced now then nerfed hard later.

[Rin]

Call me a newb, but I don't even use Volley *boggle*. While I'm not running 4-hunters + priest rotation, with only two hunters in my group, I trash everything - yes, everything. Not 80 yet, so I can't speak on behalf of level 80 Heroic instances, but I can't imagine that a balanced team would fail. I'm sure you could come up with a much worse class combination than 2 hunters, 1 dk, 1 warrior, 1 priest. As I stated in an earlier post, people that stack their teams too heavily with one class are going to be affected the most by nerfs like these. Playing a balanced / semi-balanced team is probably the only way you're going to safeguard your PvE viability. And, don't get me wrong, I used to run 4 shamans + Paladin. I switched teams, and I'd never go back; overall, I've found that my team is *way* more powerful in PvE, and about equal if not slightly better in PvP -- being composed of mixed classes, rather than just shaman.

[accretion]

I generally agree that the Hunter changes are reasonable and may even help (Kill Shot and Growl buffs will help). I hadn't parsed out Gorilla damage yet, so it's possible that it was much higher than I assumed, but my broader concern (selfishly) is for my playstyle on my other non-hunter teams. Specifically, my Priest/Pally team is a load of fun with Consecration + 4x Holy Nova and my Boomkin team is just getting started with Hurricane. If they make wholesale changes to AoE, that will really put a crimp in their style.

[Catamer]

I find it hard to believe they couldn't tell this character was over powered until now.
I just wish they had figured that out before giving it to us and then taking it away.
I feel so violated when they take stuff away. ;(

it's a pity they don't do nerfs or buffs in steps instead of these drastic changes.
couldn't they nerf/buff it by 5% per month instead of a one time %50 hit with a hammer and see where the parts fall?

I was just getting ready to start playing my hunters again... 8|

[Bigfish]

Food for thought.

Volley in WoW 1.0 through 2.0 = COMPLETELY F'IN WORTHLESS. Seriously, it was a joke. You'd get laughed at for using it.

Volley in WoW 3.0 = OMG IT DOES DAMAGE NOW? WTF R U SERIOUS?

So even with a nerf to Volley, you're still at a huge net gain over the original volley model.

:P :P :P

Hunters aren't even recognizable from what they once were. Oh man, nostalgia bomb. The days of one shotting people with Aimed Shot, when Spirit Bond was the BM tree's 31 point talent, when Takk the Leaper would viciously tear running alliance off their mounts as they rode by....

[Stabface]

Yeah Hunter pets are doing too much damage IMO... seen several combat log parses putting them over 1K DPS from just the pet. Coupled with the fact that they are really hard to kill now (good thing) and Bestial Wrath giving them 18 seconds of win, I think it's a little over the top.

Felguard is really strong too, wouldn't be surprised if it gets a tweak in the near future as well