Settle Down, Beavis!

Alternate Title: Oh, noes, not Volley!


The Big Hunter Nerf of 2008 gets announced. Some general concepts, nothing "certain" till it hits the PTR, or better yet, till it hits live.

So you get the normal "oh sht, that sux" reaction when you first hear about it.

And if you've been actively working on an Improvement Plan for your toon to help enhance your contribution to your team, also a bit of a kick in the nuts with a golf shoe.

But is it really that bad?

Or could you start more sentences with a conjunction in your blog post?

Of course, crying about it and pouting is totally normal, and what i plan to do all night long over a nice pint of whiskey really not going to change anything, so lets grab our ankles and see some of what's potentially in store for our favorite class:

Steady Shot: Used to get a 20% of your attack power bonus, will get 10%. Ok, Steady is a big part of our game, reducing its power is undesirable, but fine. Its still a mana efficient way to go. However, I'm interested to see what the theorycrafters say about this one, not whether its a nerf/non-nerf, but rather how it impacts our overall gearing strategy. At level 80, each point of agility provides less +crit than it did at 70. So word on the street has been that 2 points of AP is better than 1 point of AGI at level 80, versus level 70 where I'd gladly take 1 AGI over 2 AP as a BM. Will this change alter that new equation?

Something about pet damage getting reduced: I'm not a big fan of them making my kitty less powerful, but I'm not surprised. Princess Vespa was pulling aggro during aggro switches left and right during tuesday's Naxx-25 run. Yes, growl was turned off, and, yes, cower was turned on. However cower wasn't firing, but that's neither here nor there, I tend to agree that pets are a bit over the top in PvE right now, so this doesn't surprise me at all.

Call of the Wild: Temporary AP buff. Used to be for everybody, now just for me and my pet. I fail to see how this will cause my BM Hunter to be less OP? If anything, it'll make me MORE op than the rogue and fury warrior that my pet was previously buffing. /scratches head.

Kill Shot: Cooldown reduced from 35 secs to 15 secs, making it much more likely that I'll get 2 or 3 Kill Shots in per Boss fight. Funny thing, fighting Noth in Naxx. The way he disappears so you can fight his adds, only to return, then disappear again, causes WWS to report the fight as three separate attempts. Before the second disappearance, we had him down to less than 1%. But he disappeared. When he returned, I nailed a Kill Shot crit for 8.5k. The fight lasted for less than a second, and my DPS was reported by WWS as 12k for the attempt :-) Again, I fail to see how this makes us less OP.

Bestial Wrath and Readiness: This change can eat a fat one. One of the sole reasons I spec for Readiness is wall-to-wall Bestial Wrath. Not sure if I'll keep Readiness, or put the point somewhere else. Now, where might I put it.....

Improved Tracking: The old version of IT required that you swap your tracking mode every time you swap your target mob type. The new version will only require that you track something like Humanoids, and not Herbs, and you'll get the IT bonus regardless of what type of mob you're attacking. This feels pretty good right about now. I can easily throw the Readiness point in here, but I'm not sure where I'll find the other two points to go 3/3 IT, but I think I really will want it. Essentially a flat out 3% damage increase, without the penalty of micromanaging tracking. More OP-ness.

Growl, now with more Growl in every spoonfull: Doesn't alter raiding at all, but for solo, more threat is nice. If they added more threat to Thunderstomp at the same time, even better, but I suppose with next item in my list, that might not be an isue.

And now for the big one that everybody's up in arms over....

Not my precious Volley: Volley gets nerfed for 30% . Good. I f#@kin hate AoE. 90% of the time it so stupid, and just REEKS of people trying to top the meters. If a pull consists of 15 non-elite spiders, AoE good. If a pull consists of 5 elites, but everybody just AoE's because we overpower the dungeon and our tanks over-threat everything, AoE stupid. This type of behavior is developing into a very bad habit that is going to hurt us when new raids are released and actual CC and Main Assisting and planning pulls is required. I despise using Volley on what should be a normal pull. This won't impact my numbers on most boss fights, and for trash, like I give a sht. However, I am a fan of them keeping the "no cooldown" part of Volley, because despite my nay saying, I do like being able to chain it in the scenarios that AoE is actually a reasonable solution.

Nerf? Really?

I think I missed a couple of the changes, but like I said, the game's not over till its over (and hits live).

So the BW/Readiness and Steady Shot and Cat DPS will be reductions. The Kill Shot will be an increase, although pretty minor in the overall picture. Improved Tracking will likely be a flat 3% increase that I had avoided in the past due to annoying micromanagement. Call of the Wild keeps me the same, but stops buffing those around me, thus making it a relative increase. And volley can suck my....oops...did I really say that out loud?

Nerf? Meh.