What this tells me is that I need to get to a lvl 80 dungeon where (a) fights last longer than 4 shots, and (b) I need to have a shot rotation that goes for more than 5 seconds.
Yup. 
Also, don't forget about training dummies. You can get a reasonable approximation of what you damage will look like under ideal conditions if you go plink away at them for a few minutes.
Speaking of playing with specs on the test realm (in another thread), I've tried out MM there and might dual spec it. Looks like Chimera replaces Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot comes back, and no more BA/Serpent to refresh. The rotation seems less clunky (thanks again for Black Arrow, Blizz!), it has some nice instant shots for movement, and I can freely trap. Mana might be an issue though, although this has just been on test dummies. I wonder if switching on different fights would completely short circuit my brain? Most likely.
I wonder if switching on different fights would completely short circuit my brain? Most likely.
Yeah, that's been one of the reasons I haven't been doing something similar either.
From what I've read, though, MM seems to be about on par with BM these days in terms of play complexity. BM may need to worry more about their pet, MM more about managing mana, but both seem to have lower requirements for reaching their maximum DPS potential than SV.
After all, any fight where the raid is asking an SV hunter to drop traps (particularly frost or freezing, since they have no chance to proc LnL) is one where they are asking you to throw your personal DPS in the crapper thanks to the new Black Arrow LnL proc mechanic. Why they didn't just leave the LnL proc on serpent sting and normal traps and give SV hunters launch-able explosive traps (like the launchable freezing trap) is a mystery to me, but the situation is made more frustrating by the fact that SV hunters have better traps than BM or MM hunters and should be encouraged to use them more often, not less as Black Arrow now does.
Actually, if you ask me they got things backwards with MM and SV. The Chimera Shot mechanic feels much more like an SV thing given the tree's focus on traps, stings, utility, and, well, survivability, whereas the Black Arrow/Explosive Shot/Lock and Load mechanic feels more like it belongs in the MM tree, with its (former?) focus on unique, powerful shots.
Anyway, I certainly wouldn't blame you for looking into having a second spec at least for some fights, and Trueshot Aura is a damn fine buff, but it certainly is nice having an SV hunter around for the replenishment (and the more effective traps!).
Don't forget Aimed Shot -- that sucker is instant (it used to be on a delay), and it packs a nice punch. And Silencing Shot is the FTW against casters.
I start every pull with Serpent Sting.
Then: Aimed Shot --> Chimera Shot --> Arcane Shot --> (Silencing Shot if you need an insta-hit of damage) --> (Steady Shot if everything's on cooldown) --> (repeat Aimed/Chimera/Arcane as needed) --> Kill Shot (repeat as needed).
Yes, you'll burn through mana. Viper Sting/Rapid Fire/Steady Shot will put you back up to max pretty quickly.
But note that you can hit 4 insta-shots right in a row (5 if you include multishot). If you're grinding, you won't need nearly that many shots.
P.S. I like my MM build, but I'm going to take the 3/3 out of Improved Steady Shot (because I rarely used Steady Shot) and put 3/3 into Barrage (because I use Aimed Shot all the time).
I'm mainly just woolgathering at the moment, but it would be fun to switch it up once in a while. First I need to learn to stop getting Sam killed, poor guy.
I know this was on page 4 and the topic is over 4 years old, but I felt the need to bring this puppy back to the front because I want to get peoples perspectives on the ammo situation that Hunters are facing right and link in the WoW forums (I know I shoudn't link to that haven of scum and villiany) but I stumbled upon the WoW forum post from MMO-Champion and kind of got sucked in. Link not for the faint of heart, it is the WoW forums after all
What the thread is talking about is making ammo drop in instances, which GC (Ghost Crawler) states that if it were just one item (ie 1 single arrow) that it wouldn't be a problem but it would become so with say 100 or even 1000. I think that is BS. I am not going to bash GC or rant or rave about this, I just want everyones take on it. I made a suggestion that seemed to be totally glazed over in the forums (page 7 post 128). I am a LW and with the change to the AS buff from quiver/pouches LW now have even more useless items that can be made and not used. So that is where my suggestion came in.
What do all of you think?
I'm not going to give LWers a lot of pity. Their bracer enchant is still great and they are sources for some excellent naxx.10 level gear (which is more and more valueable since Blizzard's badge system has effectively made farming heroics a waste of time)
I will give you that, but if you are refering to the blue set that LW can make, I felt the stats lended them more towards PvP than anything. The only pieces I made were the Giantmaim bracers and legs for my Hunter. Which I replaced fairly quickly anyway. Don't get me wrong with the bracer enchant, it is wicked and I am glad LW finally got something like that. But I wanted to focus on the ammo thing, because it is true I spend about 90-120g on 3-4 stacks of Saronite Bars to turn into arrowmakers which net me 8000 to 10000 arrows. That is a typical raiding load for me.
That doesn't seem like a alot but you have to look at it in the context that, that price is basically reagant cost for Hunters. That is not factoring in consumables (Hunter and Pet food/pots/elixirs/flasks). Now add all that up and that turns into a hefty sum. I may be QQ but I guess I just need to get it out. If this turns into a rant on my part just tell me to shut the @#$* up.
I'm curious, as I don't raid as a hunter, how long does 8 - 10000 rounds last?
What the thread is talking about is making ammo drop in instances, which GC (Ghost Crawler) states that if it were just one item (ie 1 single arrow) that it wouldn't be a problem but it would become so with say 100 or even 1000. I think that is BS.
I think the point here is that dropping a consumable isn't a feasible solution to the problem. Once they get the tech that they need for the change they meant to make in 3.1 (ie, ammo is no longer a consumable) then ammo just becomes the hunter version of an idol/relic/sigil/totem/whatever, and they can start adding it to the drop tables for bosses in new raids.
As for your suggestion on the official forums regarding ammo as a craftable as well as droppable, well, I suspect that when they eventually make the above change ammo will indeed continue to be craftable. Chances are, though, that they will continue to have it be an engineering product rather than change it to LW to make up for the loss of quivers. That, however, is more a question of profession balance rather than a matter of hunter class mechanics and upgrade paths.
Oh, and with regard to the quiver being drawn on your character model: I'm pretty sure that just as before the change, quivers are drawn whenever you have a bow/crossbow drawn and do NOT have a two hander equipped (since those sit in the same spot on your character model).
I'm curious, as I don't raid as a hunter, how long does 8 - 10000 rounds last?
It really depends on the fights you are doing, but I'd say its fair to assume a hunter will be expending ammo at a rate of about 1-2 arrows per second while in combat. In a given 3-4 hour raiding night, though, I can go through anywhere from 4k to 8k ammo.
Well that is just the thing, I feel making the ammo a relic style is a good thing, in that it would give Hunters more utility with regards to using a fire arrow against a frost target for example. Another of the suggestions that was made was make Hunters have a sub skill like Rogues. Rogue posions did get revamped that you don't need to make them yourself anymore and you can just buy the ones you need, but how hard would it be to do that for a Hunter as well. Hell they have two items they can use for mats available in game already, Simple Wood and Star Wood. Then you can use the Light Feathers from the low level birds and the Long Elegant Feathers used for the Admiral Hat for the fletchings and finally use ore/bars for the tips.
I am just really curious how Blizzard is going to handle the no consumable ammo thing.
Well that is just the thing, I feel making the ammo a relic style is a good thing, in that it would give Hunters more utility with regards to using a fire arrow against a frost target for example.
For a few months there I was very actively following all blue posts even remotely related to hunters, and I'm fairly certain that this is the intended end game. While nothing was ever said about what the semantics of the new form of ammo would be (ie, would they just be an item called "Frostbite Bullets" or would it be called "Sack of Frostbite Bullets" or something else), it was pretty heavily hinted that ammo was just going to become our version of the idol/relic/etc.
The reason stated for why it didn't actually happen in 3.1 was that there were technical complexities that they didn't have time to address. I'd imagine that means issues along the lines of:
- Untangling and rewriting formulas to do with ammo consumption and ammo contribution to attacks, including giving ammo the ability to add more than a simple DPS boost.
- Dealing with creating a new type of equip slot -- sure, it will look the same to us on the paper doll screen, but the underlying mechanics of the equipment slot will be different.
- And related to that last point, deciding how this change will affect other classes that can equip ranged weapons.
So yeah, this current flap (the thread you posted in) spawned out the recent buffing of ilevel 226 and above ranged weapons. Essentially, ranged weapon damage was falling behind other weapon damage because typically they itemize new guns/bows/crossbows in conjunction with new ammo. However, since ammo was sort of in a limbo state due to the change mentioned above being pulled from 3.1 late in the dev cycle, the new non-consumable ammo items that would have been dropping in Ulduar (and presumably being crafted as well) were just yanked from the patch, but no consideration was paid to how this would affect hunter scaling. To compensate, high quality ranged weapons got a DPS boost commensurate with what the new ammo would have been adding for hunters who were working through Ulduar.
So the QQ here is "What if I have terrible luck with drops, am only running Ulduar 10 and thus don't have a 226 or better ranged weapon? If ammo had been dropping, I would be getting that DPS buff without needing a new gun, so why not patch in drops of consumable ammo until the non-consumable ammo is ready?"
And the blue reply, which I fully understand and agree with, is "Dropping a consumable that is a core part of your class mechanic would be shitty as hell."
Anyway, I think they recognize that the 226 ranged weapon buff was an imperfect solution, but in practice I think it's worked out well. In the raid or two I've done since that patch, I was actually able to keep up with the rogues who had seemed to be getting much larger boosts from their shiny new poking sticks than I was getting from my ugly ass Kel'Thuzad's big bone rifle. 
No ammo as a drop, please. Saronite arrows are already a pain. Asheron's Call had a variety of arrows you could use--blunt, sharp, frost, fire, etc.--depending on the creature. Ah, I loved that game.
Blizz seems to be simplifying mechanics over time, so it would surprise me if they added different ammo types.
I don't care how ammo is consumed as long as I have enough to get me through whatever I'm doing.
As for ammo flavors, I've got enough to worry about without having to switch out ammo for different situations.
@ Demonic -- You should be able to get 100G easily by doing Argent Tournament dailies. Or start cranking out some Armor Kits. I net about 100G per kit -- it varies depending on how much I have to throw down for a Frozen Orb.
Changes I can believe in: 3.1.3 will add 200 more AP to Hunter's Mark (to 500 from 300), and the Master Marksman talent (which is deep in the MM tree, duh), will decrease the mana cost of Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot by 25 percent at 5/5.
Changes I can believe in: 3.1.3 will add 200 more AP to Hunter's Mark (to 500 from 300), and the Master Marksman talent (which is deep in the MM tree, duh), will decrease the mana cost of Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot by 25 percent at 5/5.
Yeah, that second part should address what seems to be the biggest concern for raiding MM hunters. The theory nuts seem to think that with better mana efficiency, MM would be very competitive with SV for top hunter DPS spec.
As for the hunter's mark buff, that's a nice bump for all of us but I wonder if they intend to do anything more to help BM spec. Not that I'm complaining about my output -- it is quite healthy, and the theory puts BM closer to the other specs than it has been since 3.0.8 -- but still a little bit of a bone would be nice (maybe another percent or two added to the Arcane Shot boost we get from Ferocious Inspiration?).
@ Demonic -- You should be able to get 100G easily by doing Argent Tournament dailies. Or start cranking out some Armor Kits. I net about 100G per kit -- it varies depending on how much I have to throw down for a Frozen Orb.
But that is the thing, why should a Hunter have to dailies to do DPS? I mean ppl do dailies to get gold so they can do their BEST in raids with consumables. Hunters have to do dailies just to be able to do damage whether it is in a raid or 5 man. I know that is an exaggerated over simplification of the situation but in a way it does sum it up quite well. I do not have trouble getting money. I have a few thousand across all my toons at the moment so I am not hurting like I hear some others say. Again my original intent in reviving this thread was just to see peoples suggestions on what Blizz is going to do or should do, thats all.
A note to hunters.
If you are going to pull a mob from a tank so that you can kite it and really up your HOT DEEPS in a heroic, please don't:
A) Die because you're not doing enough damage to kill the mob before it gets to you, and
B) Tell the tank to "hold aggro" and to "get better gear" when you die.
@ Demonic: I hear you on the ammo issue. I look at it as the cost of doing business. I don't really expect Blizzard to change it. After all, a game that includes dinosaurs and motorcycles needs to maintain a reasonable degree of realism.
@ Warlock: I hope you kicked the offending hunter. I've accidentally pulled things in the past (and broken my own traps and targeted the wrong mob, etc.), but what you described is a severe case of Huntardism.
@ Warlock: I hope you kicked the offending hunter. I've accidentally pulled things in the past (and broken my own traps and targeted the wrong mob, etc.), but what you described is a severe case of Huntardism.
Oh he did. we four manned the last third of the instance.
But that is the thing, why should a Hunter have to dailies to do DPS? I mean ppl do dailies to get gold so they can do their BEST in raids with consumables.
I guess that depends on how you look at it. Hunters have ammo, warlocks have soulshards, rogues have poisons, paladins/priests/druids have consumeables they have to buy. I'd lump all those together.
God help me...why did I read this resurrected thread. I guess it's time to re-up my WoW subscription. And I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing
Come back, Joe!
/enabler
Come back, Joe!
/enabler
It's too late for me...patching as we 'speak'
Aries wrote:Come back, Joe!
/enablerIt's too late for me...patching as we 'speak' :)
[burns]Excellent![/burns]
Aries wrote:Come back, Joe!
/enablerIt's too late for me...patching as we 'speak' :)
Welcome home Joe. 
I guess that depends on how you look at it. Hunters have ammo, warlocks have soulshards, rogues have poisons, paladins/priests/druids have consumeables they have to buy. I'd lump all those together.
Well not really...not even from a mechanics stand point. If having no ammo made you do a gimped form of ranged dps then I would totally agree with you, but since it reduces the damage output (from the hunter not the pet) to 0 it's a whole different can of worms to those other mechanics you mentioned.
I think the easiest thing blizzard could do is just make it so the ammo adds the dps and once it runs out you lose that added dps but can still fire. I do like the idea of making the ammo a relic like item, but it might turn out to be a balance issue. If you look at all the other ranged classes every bit of meaningful damage they do costs them mana, but a significant portion of hunter damage comes from auto attacking at range. The auto attacks are similar to melee dps except that Hunters don't have the inherent risk that mDPS has by being that close, so making these attacks totally free might not be something that blizzard wants to do. It'd definitely going to be interesting to see what blizzard does.
Cross-posting this from the patch 3.2 thread so we can have an in depth discussion if desired.
[color=blue]Traps now have separate 30 second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.Talents
Beast Mastery
Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.Survival
Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.
Lock and Load: Now has a 22 second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.Pets
Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
[/color]
What it means:
About the traps:
PvP hunters have been complaining a lot, so they're getting a buff in the form of being able to lay down three traps at a time (as long as they are of different types).
This will also help with the issues that SV hunters have had trying to use Black Arrow on fights that also call for freeze trapping. (BA procs Lock and Load, a key element of SV DPS, but it shares a cooldown with traps. Having to freeze trap in a PvE fight == significantly less DPS as an SV hunter, which is just stupid since they have the most effective traps.)
About the Kill Command buff:
Blues have been talking about wanting to buff BM PvE damage a bit, and it looks like they are doing this by letting us boost our pet's damage output every half minute rather than every minute. Time to rearrange my macros, I guess. 
About Roar of Sacrifice:
This ability used to let the pet just eat all the damage a target took for a period of time, but people used it to exploit the Iron Council hard mode (and other fights, I'd guess) so it was hotfix nerfed to only be castable on the hunter himself. This change once again makes the talent useful again for PvP while preventing PvE abuse, I guess. It's still only available to cunning and tenacity pets though, so if you want your hunters to use it in raids you'd better ask them to bring the right pet and spec it into the ability beforehand, since a raiding hunter should usually be bringing a ferocity pet with them.
The roar of sacrifice nerf makes me feel a little sad. We experimented using it in a couple of our Sarth 3D attempts.
Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.
Son of a Female Doggo. I had Catlike Reflexes and Serpent's Sting mixed up in my head. The latter is an excellent talent which is part of the standard BM talent build, the former is a talent that is completely useless in PvE.
As such, I certainly hope they don't mean for this to be a way to fix BM PvE DPS, but rather a way to improve PvP burst damage. Off to EJ for the "expert opinion" on whether this makes the talent valuable, I suppose.
PvP hunters have been complaining a lot, so they're getting a buff in the form of being able to lay down three traps at a time (as long as they are of different types).
That sounds pretty cool. Doesn't it also mean that a SV hunter could still do CC AND get their Explosive trap dance going?
I wonder how long it will take someone to repurpose a shaman Totem Stomper into a Trap Stomper.
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