June 10th, Hunter Patch notes nerf(?)

[Xinto 18]

Hunter

General

Arcane Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]

Cobra Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]

Hunter Pets summoned by Stampede now only use auto-attacks against their target. [Requires a realm restart]

Steady Shot now deals 10% more damage. [Requires a realm restart]

Talents

Blink Strikes now has a 10-yard minimum range, and the teleportation effect cannot happen more than once every 20 seconds. [Requires a realm restart]

So take a 20sec ability every 5min and cut its dmg down by 70% (approximation based on my own logs/experience) for PVP balance when they could just stop pvp'ers using it like they did with DK Army of the Dead.

Ok we have 10% boost to Arcane and Cobra to compensate which may even things out but still not what I would have suggested.

Blink Strikes - understandable due to it being passive but it is a huge change compared to the original live implementation.

Love stampede for the flavour but having a pet doing 10-20% of your dmg as a hunter, then summoning 4 more from your stable should be a good burst, not a trickle of dps as it would now seem.

Ahh well, hunters still rule and its a nice buff to Arcane and Cobra/Steady

Edited June 13, 2013 by Xinto

[Iridar 80]

I'd rather have higher sustainable damage and less burst damage. Current metagame for hunters is to dish out 500k for the first 20 seconds of the fitght and then slide into a pit of nothingness.

Stampede was one of the abilities giving hunters this stupid burst and it needed to be toned down.

[nicocba 5]

I've cleared N Tot this week and didn't felt a big difference on my numbers

[ancuncha 0]

i've just been mucking about at a target dummy with my rotations (not the ideal place)

i'm at ilvl 506 and am finding arcane shot overly strong

so as bm i did normal rotation using a wolf pet all the time and was about 76k average over 10 mins or so

then i just applied serpent sting, used cobra to refresh and generate focus along with dire beast and spammed arcane shot, was at 81k

then normal rotation, but dropping kill command in favour of arcane shots 85k ish

then did the same for sv

normal around 94k

arcane spam much the same at 80k

i switched to bm at the start of 5.3 from sv and my dps went up, could be a l2p issue, but i think i'm ok as i perform well enough next to ppl of similar ilvl in raids, but my bm dps has dropped back since this change

is it possible to checkout if this is accurate from someone who knows better than me ? :)

[Xinto 18]

Hmm that is a tough question.

I'd usually immediately shout "female dwarf"... but that tells you the theoretical and not the actual for your play style.

From what you have described, without raid buffs, SV normal rotation gives you the biggest boost/dps. BUT with a wolf (5% crit) you wont have mastery, which is a biggy for your pet dmg.

I don't have numbers to support but I suspect the main thing your test shows is that BM suffers more from lack of buffs than SV does.

I know through my own sims BM~=SV but BM>SV by ~3-5k dps.

So to summarise what I really want to say, play both depending on the boss and which gets you the most dps/you are the most comfortable with.

SV is more forgiving for lapses in concentration but BM is technically top dog.

Also note, from the sims the changes come out as a slight boost to my dps in both SV and BM spec.

The changes have made missing an arcane or cobra shot a bigger loss than previously which may be the area you are losing your dps which you wasn't previously.

So in game testing, LFR is (ok) pretty good for this as you can repeat the same boss and generally the fights are of similar length (important while considering BM has 10sec burst phases every minute.)

Hope this is of some use.