Cheetah needs a buff

Classes Hunter
1

Now, before you call me crazy or a troll hear me out. Compared to Sprint from rogues, Cheetah is woefully under powered, and I can prove it.

Now, I don’t know how fast we actually run in game, but for simplicities sake, lets assume the default speed for everyone is 1 yard per second.

Sprint is a 70% increase for 8 seconds, with a 1 minute cd.
Cheetah is a 90% increase for 3 seconds and a 30% increase for 9 seconds, so a 12 second speed boost, with a 2.5 minute CD.

So let’s do some calculations.

Base Speed: 1 x 8 = 8 + 4(to even out with cheetah) = 12

A 70% increase in speed means with sprint a rogue is going 1.7 yards per second.

With Sprint 1.7 x 8 = 13.6 + 4(to even out with cheetah) = 17.6

So with sprint a rogue will travel, assuming a speed of 1 yard per second, 17.6 yards over 12 seconds.

Now lets do cheetah.

Base Speed: 1 x 12 = 12

A 90% increase comes out to 1.9 yps and a 30% increase is 1.3 yps.

With Cheetah: 1.9 x 3 = 5.7
1.3 x 9 = 11.7
11.7 + 5.7 = 17.4

So over twelve seconds the hunter will actually traverse slightly less ground then a rogue when using their speed boosts. But, factor in the length of the cooldowns, and a rogue can use sprint 5 times for every two times a hunter can use cheetah.

So in short, in comparison, cheetah is underpowered compared to sprint based on the length of the cooldowns.

6 Likes
2

Woefully not whoa fully. Lol

3 Likes
3

While I appreciate the calculations, I have two problems with the premise:

  1. Similar abilities do not need to be similar levels of power between different classes. In fact, it’s a terrible goal.
  2. The current “Aspect of the Cheetah,” as a substitute for the previous version, has caused the Hunter in general, and MM especially, to be turned in to a kiting class that can’t kite.

The problem with AotC is not that it’s only up once every three minutes, but that it isn’t up on demand. The previous AotC gave us a skillful tool we could use to nearly always be out of range of our enemies (if done properly) as well as get away from them when they got close. Because it dazed us, it took tremendous skill to use to best effect, but it was a damn useful tool despite its drawbacks. It was also a fun tool because of them (mastery of difficult things is fun).

With the highly mobile melee meta that we have today (and likely will have going forward) coupled with the fact that basically everyone has a long range instant attack (no possible counterplay) the best move to bring Hunter’s back to their former kiting glory is to give them the real AotC back, but without the daze or removal on hit. I.e. Hunters need an on demand unremovable 30% movement speed stance.

So that we don’t just sit in that stance all the time, and to bring back some of the old choices (and thus mastery) Hunter’s would also need a damage stance (Aspect of the Hawk). This would force us to make the choice of speed or damage. It is a choice we had for over a decade.

Kiting through superior speed is a key element of every Ranger style class in almost every MMORPG (maybe all of them). Ranger (Hunter/Archer) is THE kiting class. It always has been, it always should be. WoW Hunter should be no exception. It never was until the class destruction in Legion. If you want to “unprune” Hunter, unprune the entire core Aspect of the class.

17 Likes
4

Couldn’t agree more. Blizzard completely misunderstood the purpose of Aspect of the Hawk. They saw it and thought “It’s just a flat damage buff so it is boring.”. On the contrary, that’s all it needed to be because it was the optimal aspect to be in for dealing damage. This meant that when we used other aspects we had to do so very deliberately, because we would be losing damage whenever we were in cheetah or monkey or wild. Therefore changing aspects was a trade off, not just “Oh, this situation again, Aspect of the X is best here” like stances or forms were.

It was a trade off between damage and utility/mobility/etc… That is why aspects were interesting, because there were many situations where a non-Hawk aspect was valuable, but still cost us DPS and therefore forced us to try to use it as sparingly as possible (this was compounded with Cheetah, where using it at the wrong time could spell our doom because of the daze effect). This created very engaging gameplay in aspect dancing. But nope, had to get rid of them because muh pruning.

11 Likes
5

I agree with you, on basically ever count you made.

I will say before I say anything else that the current version fits the name better, but the former version was far more interesting, powereful, and overall useful.

That said, I don’t agree with just giving us a 30% movement speed aspect with no drawbacks. Spinner has a good point. Having other aspects, especially hawk is a sufficient drawback to cheetah being a constant 30%. Going back to the old aspect dancing would be preferable if they remove the daze from cheetah.

As it stand now, if they’re going to leave it as it is, they need to reduce the CD of cheetah. Using my example from above rogues get 28 yards with sprint for every 10.8 yards hunters get with cheetah.

6

I disagree. The old “aspects” were stances. You remained in them until you chose a different Aspect. There is nothing more “aspectlike” about the current version, there is only less utility and infrequency of choice.

I’m fairly certain you did not read what I wrote.

That was one of the main statements in my post…

If they leave it as it is now, MM will continue to be useless in organized PvP for the next 2(+) years and still unable to cope with any skilled melee. Reducing the CD of the current style of AotC is a useles gesture, unless they reduce it to 12 seconds. Then it would be useful, but very unfun spam without choice or meaning.

1 Like
7

I miss the old AotC. Even with an adequate spin-disengage-posthaste knowhow, running to things is a chore. Running from things is also a chore. It makes me feel like my avatar: thicc and slow.

I like some of the suggestions here for making it more meaningful, but I just don’t understand the long CD as it is. Most others are roughly 45 seconds to a minute (please correct me if I am wrong). Why do hunters get the shaft for it?

8

I think they are more referring to the Cheetah part of the name. It makes more sense for a Cheetah to go really fast in short bursts since that is what they do in real life, as opposed to going a bit fast with no definite limit.

1 Like
9

Ok, fair enough. Still, it was a perfectly appropriate name for 10 years as a 30%+ movement speed increase (sans bursty speed). In the context of this game it is not more fitting now.

10

No you’re right. Perhaps originally Aspect of the Gazelle would work better, or something. But at this point Cheetah has been known for being what it was, so it should be brought back to what it was. There was literally no point in changing Cheetah to its current iteration. It’s just another movement speed boost like Sprint and Dash. Boring and bland. It was MUCH more engaging when it was a permanent 30% buff with the daze effect.

4 Likes
11

Unfortunately such a thing would not work in the current meta.

I’ve been playing nothing but Classic since its release (I also played Hunter from Vanilla to BfA, but Classic is so fresh I can speak to it with perfect memory). In that game you KNOW when you are going to be dazed. Anytime a Mage or Lock is within 24-26 yards and hasn’t used Fireblast or Shadowburn you can’t use AotC. If you know those are on CD you are safe. If a melee uses a ranged attack there is an animation, so you have half a second to react. There is tons of counterplay. It is a VERY skillful ability that you learn by trial and error. It is awesome.

Now, there is so much mobility, and so many long range instant attacks those opportunities for counterplay just don’t exist. You would literally be permanently dazed if it was implemented as it was. Even if the Aspect was just removed, like it was after the glyph was introduced (Cata or MoP?) it would still be mostly useless for the same reasons. All the other classes have grown beyond its original trade-off. That is why I advocate for a permanent speed stance, with other stance(s) to encourage choice.

3 Likes
12

I just want it work like a rogues sprint, would help with our whole kiting theme if it did.

13

I argue that it would not. Melee have too many instant, or near instant gap closers and too many things to increase movement speed (many have base movement speed that is faster in addition to everything else). A kiting class must have at least equal movement speed increasers and/or gap openers or they simply can’t kite. I don’t mean to suggest that such a kiting class must far outmatch the melee, but it must have sufficient tools for near permanent kiting to be possible if played perfectly. A one minute burst of speed does not meet this requirement.

Even when AotC is up it is still insufficient most of the time against melee. Having it be up once a minute isn’t going to help in any one individual fight against melee, which is where we need the love.

3 Likes
14

You’re not wrong. You’d have to do 3 things to make the way cheetah works now, to make it viable for anything.

  1. Drastically reduce it’s cooldown, like less than a minute.
  2. Drastically increase it’s speed boost, like 150+% for 5 seconds and 75+% for 7 seconds.
    and
  3. Make it break all snares and slows and make the hunter immune to snares and slows for the 5 second burst.

Would this fix it, probably not, but it would be way better then what we have now.

1 Like
15

This may be an unpopular opinion, but as a hunter I miss having Wing clip on all specs that could proc the snare. I miss having melee weapons and when someone got close you could wing clip Raptor strike for a huge chunk of health. I wish that would come back.

I do think with all the gap closers that melee have, hunters need something, more defensives, more damage, I don’t know the answer really…

1 Like
16

Honestly even if they just made cheetah a one minute CD I’d be happier. Then maybe further reduced by .5 seconds every time you take damage?

17

Reducing the cooldown would help, but it’d take more than just reducing the cooldown to make it something useful for more than just pve. I don’t play BM or Surv, but as MM, we only have 2 gap openers. Cheetah and disengage. Disengage is basically just a reverse blink, but worse because terrain difference can block it.

Cheetah doesn’t really help because it doesn’t remove snares/slows and distance you’re going to get from it, is not enough to really get you anywhere considering the mobility of melee dps.

18

U pair masters call with cheatah and slow them same time. That’s how u gain that gap.

But 3 minute cd for a non freedoming speed boost is a joke. Should be on same cd as a rogues sprint. Like 45 to a minute would help bm alot.

I remember the brick wall I felt all at once. The same moment they nerfed masters call, cheatah, and post haste is the same moment dh mobility and buffs to other melee gap closers happened.

Felt like a train had stopped my kiting in it’s tracks. This patch feels worse than any other for ranged hunter in pvp I feel. This seems to be due to all melee having great mobility mixed with. All the new ranged attacks from traits, essences, and corruptions that melee now has access too.

Example melee can have mechacycle trinket, crucible of flame major or breath of dying, or lazer. Heed my call plus summoned pet traits, twisted appendage tendrils, infinite stars, all kinds of stuff. How we supposed to kite that on top of melee gap closers. This patch is dumb

4 Likes
19

You don’t even need all this math to prove the point. Our main movement CD is on a 3 minute cooldown, in an era of the game where movement is super important. It’s bad. Period.

I still love hunters and this toon is my main, but we went from one of the fastest classes to one of the God-awful slowest. It’s sad. Posthaste does not do nearly enough to make up for how Cheetah/Pack got gutted.

I see two easy options for fixing this situation: either make the entire level 75 talent row baseline (not as big of a reduction on Cheetah but we would get a CD reduction on Turtle as well, and that’s another huge area of weakness for hunters), or make the Hunting Pack PvP talent baseline.

2 Likes
20

You’re right I didn’t need the math to prove to other hunters. The math was mostly for the other classes who I figured would inevitably come in and spout off nonsense that Cheetah was so OP compared to sprint that it shouldn’t be buffed and should in fact be nerfed.