How would you redesign our class

[Airese-alleria (Airese)]

No to Legion MM vulnerable playstyle.

[Whim-emerald-dream]

My first and foremost thing is that Blizzard needs to listen to those who main the Specs they are working on and not those who don’t even bother playing. If anyone thinks that this is a shot at Bepples and Yura, it’s not. Blizzard has a history of letting those who main other classes have more input taken than those who main Hunters in the past. It is solely a shot at Blizzard.

Baseline
-Camouflage needs to return to being both baseline and to not have the CD begin when it is deactivated. Seriously this is one of the most horrible changes made to a Hunter Ability. It’s just bad.
-Aspect of the Cheetah needs to be a constant percentage buff to movement speed and treated like Ghost Wolf for Shaman and the old Travel Form for Druids. It should also come long before we get a mount.
-Aspect of the Chameleon still is not worth the gold used to buy it. Making it Account-wide still will not make it worth the gold spent to buy it. We had an Aspect that made both the Hunter and the Pet untrackable. It wasn’t OP then, still would not be OP now. It actually beats Vanilla Lacerate as the worst ability ever inflected on this Class.
-Aspect of the Turtle needs a short CD and a buff, especially since it takes us out of the fight while still keeping us in Combat.
-Roar of Sacrifice needs to return to being baseline. You have a historically squishy class with only one baseline Defensive without it.

MM
MM needs a shorter cast time on Aimed as well as it needs to be cast on the move. Building up to an instant Aimed would be nice, but giving us that SV feel in MM we were promised a few years ago would be better. LW is fairly fine where it is but a 1-3% advantage in damage over having a pet is fine. MM needs Scatter Shot Baseline with Binding Arrow as a PvP talent is a nice idea, but honestly just do away with PvP Talents all together.

BM
BM needs more shots. There is still a greater disconnect between the damage the Hunter does and the damage dealt. Pet damage needs reworked as well since it scales poorly. Animal Companion is nice and should stay, but it’s always been an unfinished concept, even in Legion. It needs to actually act like a second pet right off the bat.

SV
SV needs abilities as well. The Problems with Legion SV were that it was completely unfinished and you had too much going on. The problem with BfA SV is that it’s oversimplified. MB should have never become a talent. KC and FS do not need to be Focus Builders either. Use RS as a Focus Dump. Using MB as a Focus Builder instead of KC while being hard hitting is just weird enough to be interesting when I think about it. Lacerate should return to being baseline and SrS should stay. WFI should be a talent still but GT should be baseline. Carve and Butchery need to be buffed a little to give us more AoE prospects.

Please for the love of God move the Hunter abilities vendor to Stranglethorn Vale. Also please keep Fireworks and especially Fetch in the game. I also want a return of Quivers outside of Thas’.

[Bepples-barthilas]

So many things I would like to add to in this thread. Good to see it’s really constructive. One thing I’d like to briefly mention:

The GCD should be 1.0 seconds, not 1.5

Exactly like it used to be.

Yes, I’m aware that haste now reduces it. I’m also aware how, outside of Bloodlust, you will never have enough haste to bring it back down to 1.0 seconds. This change to the pace was a huge part of the poor reception the class got going into Legion. I remember the day they made that change on the Legion beta; the reaction from the players was immediate and filled with disgust. I see many people since Legion saying the class feels sluggish and they can’t put their finger on it; it’s the GCD increase that makes them feel that way.

While we are talking about GCD, all the spells that were off GCD need to be back off the GCD. It was perceived as a bad idea when it was first implemented and it still is. I’m sick of Blizzard pretending “you’ll get used to it” is an excuse to implement whatever they want and dismiss all feedback. Getting used to a bad change does not make it a good change.

[Xaedys-thrall (Xaedys)]

The GCD should be 1.0 seconds, not 1.5

Eh, the GCD being 1.0s back in WoD and earlier was one of the most significant reasons haste was so garbage for us. Besides, what are you going to do with those extra GCDs? Both BM and SV are limited by CDs and passive resource generation, and already have empty GCDs to varying degrees, and the majority of MM’s time is spent casting or channeling Aimed, Steady, or Rapid. MM would probably see the most benefit from such a change, but still barely a third of their rotation is instacasts.

This change to the pace was a huge part of the poor reception the class got going into Legion

lolwat. The reason hunters got such crap reception going into Legion is that they revamped literally all 3 specs, and poorly at that. Both SV and MM becomes entirely new specs, and BM retained mostly just superficial similarity to WoD-era BM. The GCD change had very little to do with it.

Again, the GCD change was one of the best changes they made, from a stats balance perspective. Fixed-GCD classes either hate haste (ex. monks, Legion 'sin rogues), or have to be resource-limited (ie. have dead GCDs) and have nearly all of their resource generation scale from haste (current 'sin rogues, now that their bleeds and thus income from Venomous Wounds scales with haste). MM hated haste in WoD because a huge chunk of our rotation was instacast Aimed Shots, and we were already GCD-locked due to spammable Steady Shot generation, meaning a significant chunk of our rotation simply didn’t scale with haste at all.

It’d be the exact same today if they made the GCD fixed. For MM, roughly a third of our rotation is instacast Arcane Shots, and while we’d see an immediate gain there, that’d come at the cost of that entire third of our rotation getting zero benefit from haste. As a percentage of our rotation, those Arcane Shots would take up more and more time as we got more haste, because everything else would be getting faster, but those Arcane Shots wouldn’t.

No, GCD-scaling was easily one of the best things they did for hunters.

[Bepples-barthilas]

My first and foremost thing is that Blizzard needs to listen to those who main the Specs they are working on and not those who don’t even bother playing. If anyone thinks that this is a shot at Bepples and Yura, it’s not. Blizzard has a history of letting those who main other classes have more input taken than those who main Hunters in the past. It is solely a shot at Blizzard.

I didn’t take this as an insult because I agree with it. And it applies to other classes, too. I don’t expect Blizzard to make concessions in their Rogue class design based on what I want; after all, I don’t play a rogue. Conversely, I don’t expect Blizzard to make changes to the Hunter class based on what Rogues want. Yet their Legion overhaul to the class seemed to be largely driven by the people who didn’t play the class. Hell, we lost entire mechanics based on a perception of infringing on other class’s “fantasies” (namely Kill Shot).

I know we probably don’t agree on this part but I do think that’s a big part of why Survival ended up being melee. It’s just common sense that the people playing a spec don’t want to see it turned into an entirely different spec. I know some ranged Survival players did end up playing and even preferring melee Survival but, anecdotally, most of the people I’ve talked to about it who support melee SV had minimal investment in the spec; in a lot of those cases they still don’t play it. Beyond the anecdotes, Blizzard fully admitted that they knew existing Hunters would largely not play Survival and were aiming towards new Hunters.

I remember reading a Hunter forum thread about the announcement of the removal of melee from Hunters in 5.0 (I was arguing with someone claiming that Hunters were outraged over it); it seemed like the most central concern was with transmogs since the melee weapon showed on the back at the time when idle. Only 2 people in the whole thread were upset because they wanted a melee Hunter and they were posting from a Paladin and a Death Knight. People may say I’m reading into it too much but I see that a lot in these discussions and to me it speaks volumes.

It actually beats Vanilla Lacerate as the worst ability ever inflected on this Class.

Meh, at least it has niche applicability and doesn’t cost anything to have (other than the gold to buy it, of course). Lacerate took up a talent slot; not only that, but the very end spot of a spec, and the end ability was always meant to be a big deal. And it had literally zero applicability. The best you could say about it was it could keep a rogue out of stealth, and even then you had Serpent Sting to do that which did more damage, ignored armour, and was ranged.

BM needs more shots.

I actually think it’s in an OK spot now with Cobra Shot having an actual interaction with Kill Command and Barbed Shot being a thing. One more change I would make is Chimera Shot being baseline. This of course is in conflict with the people who want CS to be back for MM but I think MM has recovered from losing CS; Rapid Fire is a pretty neat signature ability, after all.

[Xaedys-thrall (Xaedys)]

This of course is in conflict with the people who want CS to be back for MM but I think MM has recovered from losing CS

Honestly, I think most people want CS back for MM simply because that’s what we had as our instant nuke. I see no reason Headshot or Marked Shot couldn’t take on that mantle, or even a redesigned Piercing Shot. The goal is simply to have a high-damage instacast cooldown nuke to liven up the rotation a bit, and to replace the janky Precise Shots mechanism.

[Bepples-barthilas]

Eh, the GCD being 1.0s back in WoD and earlier was one of the most significant reasons haste was so garbage for us. Besides, what are you going to do with those extra GCDs? Both BM and SV are limited by CDs and passive resource generation, and already have empty GCDs to varying degrees, and the majority of MM’s time is spent casting or channeling Aimed, Steady, or Rapid. MM would probably see the most benefit from such a change, but still barely a third of their rotation is instacasts.

There are other, better ways of making haste useful. For example, making certain abilities have cooldowns scale with haste. Hey, they already did that in Legion. That right there makes Haste more valuable. Haste was already valuable before that, even if it never really superceded Crit for most of the time. So this is a classic instance of Blizzard killing one bird with two stones; they already had a new mechanic that would have fixed the issue but they made another gameplay sacrifice on top of that. Combined with putting our offensive CDs on the GCD, this has directly led to Haste being massively over-valued across most DPS specs. It’s making us hit faster, reducing our cooldowns, increasing our resource gain, and reducing our GCD. That’s a lot of functionality packed into one stat and you’re not going to convince me if it drops just one of those that it didn’t use to have in a time when most people considered the class design to be far better than it is now.

Downtime due to passive resource generation is also, arguably, a bad thing, but both BM and SV in BFA make sure the focus costs are low enough that they have minimal downtime. Blizzard has become better at it than early Legion times when BM had 30-40% downtime. So it would still be beneficial to have a faster GCD for those specs, especially for mechanics like Beast Cleave or Frenzy when you want to time the refresh as close as possible to the expiration.

Ultimately, it’s about making it feel better to play. I don’t care if those Arcane Shots aren’t befitting from haste (they still are, by the way, because haste will still increase your focus gain) because I’ll be pressing it every 1.0 seconds instead of 1.3 or whatever it is due to my haste, and that’s faster paced. Sacrificing gameplay fluidity for stat value is having your priorities upside-down. Flow and pace is relevant for every second of someone’s gameplay and is the most major part of their enjoyment. Who is deriving more enjoyment from the relative value of a stat? It’s insane to prioritise the latter over the former. Find other ways to make haste more valuable without gutting the pace of the spec.

lolwat. The reason hunters got such crap reception going into Legion is that they revamped literally all 3 specs, and poorly at that. Both SV and MM becomes entirely new specs, and BM retained mostly just superficial similarity to WoD-era BM. The GCD change had very little to do with it.

The GCD actually had a lot to do with it. Part of those revamps was changing the GCD and people responded very negatively to that. They may have been more receptive to the revamps if the pace wasn’t so poor in comparison. It was absolutely a major part of the hate.

Again, the GCD change was one of the best changes they made, from a stats balance perspective. Fixed-GCD classes either hate haste (ex. monks, Legion 'sin rogues), or have to be resource-limited (ie. have dead GCDs) and have nearly all of their resource generation scale from haste (current 'sin rogues, now that their bleeds and thus income from Venomous Wounds scales with haste). MM hated haste in WoD because a huge chunk of our rotation was instacast Aimed Shots, and we were already GCD-locked due to spammable Steady Shot generation, meaning a significant chunk of our rotation simply didn’t scale with haste at all.

And, again, why should I care about the “stats balance perspective” over the gameplay perspective? How exactly do you think this works? “My whole rotation is 30% slower but at least haste is now far and away my best stat”? Who the hell cared about the state of haste before 7.0? Here’s the actual MM stat priority from 6.2:

Weapon DPS 2.80
Agility 1.00
Critical Strike 0.71
Multistrike 0.64
Versatility 0.60
Mastery 0.59
Haste 0.58

Haste is the worst one but it was hardly useless. it was 81% of the value of a point of crit. You are going to have a real hard time convincing anyone here that a less-than-20% difference between our best and worst secondary stat was a major problem, let alone a problem worth taking such a major hit to the entire pace of all of our specs. Haste still made our resource regeneration a lot faster, which mattered. You’re also talking about the only tier where Aimed Shot was not a cast time (since WotLK at least), so this was just about as low as you can get for haste’s value since the 4.0 revamp.

Furthermore, we didn’t have cooldowns that scaled off haste at the time. Chimera Shout, while ending up as a BM talent, would also end up with a cooldown that scaled with haste. If you take the 6.2 Marksmanship and add just that one change that would already be sufficient to propel Haste up beyond Mastery, perhaps even into parity with Versatility or even Multistrike, especially given the DPS value of Chimera Shot at the time.

It’d be the exact same today if they made the GCD fixed.

See above. I don’t care because a) Haste would still be sufficiently valuable and b) it would make the class more fun to play; we can speak from experience, after all.

No, GCD-scaling was easily one of the best things they did for hunters.

Lmao. Not only is this totally out of touch but it also doesn’t even agree with the rest of your post. At no point did you counter the fact that it did cost us something; that’s not your argument. Your whole argument rests on playing up what was gained by the change and totally ignoring what was lost. Even so, who exactly is jumping for joy over haste being a higher value? How does that even register on the list of “great changes for the Hunter class”, let alone anywhere near “best”? Maybe we can go around on the forums or in game and survey a bunch of hunters: “Which would you rather: the class being faster by default or the haste being a higher value?”, or is that too much a foregone conclusion to even matter?

[Xaedys-thrall (Xaedys)]

“Which would you rather: the class being faster by default or the haste being a higher value?”, or is that too much a foregone conclusion to even matter?

I remember playing during HFC. I remember haste being the stat you wanted as little of as possible. I don’t want to see that return, and make no mistake, removing GCD scaling when a third of our rotation is instacasts would do precisely that.

Even so , who exactly is jumping for joy over haste being a higher value ?

<-

Maybe you’re fine turning down 10-15 itemlevel upgrades because one of your stats is complete garbage compared to another. I’ve had enough of that with mastery on my DH this expansion, I don’t want haste to return to that level against for my hunter. No. Thanks.

Fortunately (for me), the likelihood of Blizzard restoring hunters to a 1.0 GCD is roughly 0. You can campaign for it all you want, but if they aren’t even willing to make simple mechanical changes based on feedback, they are definitely not walking back one of the most significant foundational changes to the class since Mana -> Focus.

Anyway, it’s late, maybe I’ll respond to the rest of that tomorrow.

[Bepples-barthilas]

I remember playing during HFC. I remember haste being the stat you wanted as little of as possible. I don’t want to see that return, and make no mistake, removing GCD scaling when a third of our rotation is instacasts would do precisely that.

I don’t care about your faulty memory. What I actually care about is the real value of haste back then. While it was last-place, it wasn’t totally worthless. It wasn’t like, say, Versatility in early Legion for BM.

You’re still ignoring the comparison of issues, here. You’re putting a laser-focus on the value of haste like it’s the end-all issue while totally ignoring the fact that the improvement of that value came at the cost of gameplay. No one is denying that haste was of low value before Legion and its value has increased, mainly as a result of the GCD change. What I’m disputing is whether that was a positive change. Are we in a better position now because haste is more valuable? And I find it absolutely impossible to say “yes” to that when the cost of making haste more valuable is making our gameplay slower across the board.

We didn’t actually get a buff or anything. We got nerfed to be more dependent on a particular stat. How is that better? Make the stat better, instead. Like I said, they already did that by making some CDs scale with haste. That’s another thing you glossed over; what’s the value of haste if we have a 1.0 sec CD but several of our abilities have haste-scaling CDs? We never saw that because the haste-scaling CDs and the GCD change happened at the same time. What if they also buff the focus regen bonus? If the value of Haste for MM right before the GCD change was almost identical to that of Mastery, why do we need such a broad, class-breaking change to make Haste better? I said it in my last post and it still holds true: your priorities are all sorts of screwed up.

<-

Cool story. I don’t believe you. I think you are just trying to be contrarian and now you are doubling down.

But hey; I’m willing to accept that some people really are that much more excited about numbers on their character menu rather than actually, you know, playing the game. With this many players there’s bound to be at least one person supporting any given fringe opinion. It still doesn’t justify catering to that opinion at the expense of the larger group of people that don’t like the change, and you’re literally the only person I have seen on any forum saying it was a good change. I’ve seen people defending it, don’t get me wrong. But the argument is usually “it’s not bad and you can work around it”, which is not actually arguing that it’s a positive change… much less stating that it’s “one of the best things they did for hunters”.

Maybe you’re fine turning down 10-15 itemlevel upgrades because one of your stats is complete garbage compared to another. I’ve had enough of that with mastery on my DH this expansion, I don’t want haste to return to that level against for my hunter. No. Thanks.

I have never had that happen more frequently than in Legion and BFA since stat weights are now much higher by proportion… and often Haste is the key culprit!! What a joke of a defense. Even if it were accurate, it still doesn’t justify such a negative change for the gameplay.

Oh, and it’s not accurate.

Here is a comparison between the best cloak you can get and the worst in HFC. The best is crit/multistrike weighted towards crit. The worst is haste/mastery weighted towards mastery. While mastery is better than haste, the difference is so small that it won’t make a major difference to the outcome here.

Good cloak: https://web.archive.org/web/20151113152522/http://www.wowhead.com/item=124135/cloak-of-tangible-dread&bonus=567

Bad cloak:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150917234200/http://www.wowhead.com/item=124134/cloak-of-desperate-temerity&bonus=561:566

I set the bad cloak to item level 730, i.e. mythic. I set the good cloak to ilvl 716, i.e. heroic warforged. This is a 14 ilvl difference, which fits between the range you gave.

I then did a simple value calculation using the stat weights I gave, which basically gives you the total value in terms of Agility of each item.

iLvL 730 Haste/Mastery cloak: 423.92
iLvL 716 Crit/Multistrike cloak: 401.07

Pawn would happily tell you this is a 5% upgrade (rounded down from 5.67%). If I swap the Haste and Mastery values on the Haste/Mastery cloak, so that it’s now weighted towards Haste, it now has 422.97 i.e. a 5.46% upgrade
I’m sure there are specs where it was worse, but your scenario just wasn’t the case for 6.2 MM. I’m even sure the stat priorities changed depending on hotfixes, current stats, and even boss strategies. But in order for haste to be bad enough for the 730 there to be worse than the 716 I have to drop the haste value down to 0.48 which is pretty drastic. I actually did see one stat priority listed online that did make the 730 cloak worse but it was posted months earlier than the one I cited above (earlier than 6.2 released, in fact), so I doubt it.

Fortunately (for me), the likelihood of Blizzard restoring hunters to a 1.0 GCD is roughly 0. You can campaign for it all you want, but if they aren’t even willing to make simple mechanical changes based on feedback, they are definitely not walking back one of the most significant foundational changes to the class since Mana -> Focus.

When you’re argument boils down to “Blizzard said so and that’s final” it’s not a good one, on account of being a) an argument to authority and b) overly faithful in Blizzard being consistent and unchanging in their design philosophy.

[Ksamil-malganis]

If they being back mobile aimed shot it needs to be a big damage drop off or you move 30% slower while casting it

[Whim-emerald-dream]

I didn’t take this as an insult because I agree with it.

You might not, Yura might not, but someone just might down the road.

[Côdy-area-52]

I kind of like the bm PlayStyle to a degree. I’d like to see 3stack frenzy just base line, beast cleave last longer and better pet scalability. But it feels okay.

MM I’d like to see the restrictions on cleave/aoe gone, reduce aimed shot cast time and get rid of hunters mark and replace it with something to compensate.

Survival should just be what it was in mop. We have to many melee specs. We didn’t need another

[Xaedys-thrall (Xaedys)]

@Bepples-barthilas

You’re putting a laser-focus on the value of haste like it’s the end-all issue while totally ignoring the fact that the improvement of that value came at the cost of gameplay .

I disagree with this assertion. You’ve every right to feel that way yourself, but don’t talk as if it’s objective fact that gameplay significantly degraded as a result. Personally, I regard having to turn down gear because our stat weights are too split on value as a concrete and notable gameplay degradation. The GCD change, I don’t see as one, or at least it doesn’t feel notably worse to me (and I’ve been playing a hunter as an off-and-on main, intermixed mostly with my warlock and DH at various tiers, since Black Temple).

@Bepples-barthilas

What I’m disputing is whether that was a positive change. Are we in a better position now because haste is more valuable? And I find it absolutely impossible to say “yes” to that when the cost of making haste more valuable is making our gameplay slower across the board.

It’s not that significantly slower, though. As I pointed out above, neither BM or SV would notice significant differences from a 1.0s GCD, since both already have unfilled GCDs in their rotation as is. MM would see some difference, but since 2/3rds of the rotation already isn’t GCD-limited, it wouldn’t be that substantial (it’d really just increase the number of Arcane Shots in our rotation, and as a result increase the percentage of our time we spend regening with Steady Shot, since our spammable filler would consume more focus per cast-second).

Went ahead and simmed it to double-check. Overriding Arcane Shot to a 1.0 GCD (didn’t bother with Trueshot and Double Tap, since they collectively take up only ~4% of our rotation) drops our time spent using Arcane Shot, out of the average 300s fight duration, from 98.7s to 81.0s, and increases our time spent using Steady Shot from 63.5s to 79.5s (of note, how is that going to make the rotation feel faster, if we’re spending more time casting our 1.75s base cast generator?), with everything else occupying within 1.0s of the same rotational time as current (which makes sense, neither Aimed or Rapid would be effected by a change to the GCD, since they are limited entirely by their cooldowns). Total DPS rose by about 3.6%, but we can assume Blizzard would offset it with a spec aura nerf.

The Agility-normalized stat weights without the override (using the default T23 profile for MM) were:

• Weapon DPS - 5.61
• Mastery - 1.31
• Versatility - 1.23
• Crit - 1.20
• Haste - 1.09
• Agility - 1.00
• AP - 0.95

After:

• Weapon DPS - 5.68
• Mastery - 1.33
• Versatility - 1.23
• Crit - 1.19
• Agility - 1.00
• Haste - 0.99
• AP - 0.95

So haste dropped in value by 9.2% and is now below even agility in value. It’s over 25% below the value of mastery, compared to ~17% below before the change.

And the net result? More time spent casting Steady Shot. Ya, that’s super fun.

@Bepples-barthilas

your priorities are all sorts of screwed up .

My priorities are just fine, thank you. Just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t mean they are objectively wrong. You are not always correct, nor do you magically speak for the entirety of the hunter community.

@Bepples-barthilas

Cool story. I don’t believe you. I think you are just trying to be contrarian and now you are doubling down.

You can disbelieve me all you want, that’s your prerogative. But I do prefer haste-scaled GCDs. Fixed GCDs really don’t do much for MM, and they definitely don’t do much for BM or SV, and the tradeoff of haste not being as garbage is worth every bit of that change, in my book.

@Bepples-barthilas

Here is a comparison between the best cloak you can get and the worst in HFC.

Your links are broken (The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.). Your stat weights are also wrong (where’d you pull those from anyway, Icy Veins? You know they just ballpark those for their guides, right? Those aren’t “actual” weights at all).

@Bepples-barthilas

When you’re argument boils down to “Blizzard said so and that’s final” it’s not a good one, on account of being a) an argument to authority and b) overly faithful in Blizzard being consistent and unchanging in their design philosophy.

Argument to authority is only a valid criticism if my argument is Blizzard said X therefore X is correct, which was not in fact my argument. My argument was that Blizzard said so and therefore it’s most likely going to stay that way. That’s not a logical fallacy in the slightest.

Maybe you should read up a bit more on the definition of an argument from authority.

And I have little faith in Blizzard being consistent. I do, however, have great faith in Blizzard being bullheaded and stubborn, even about things they should change (and this ain’t one of them).

[Bepples-barthilas]

I disagree with this assertion. You’ve every right to feel that way yourself, but don’t talk as if it’s objective fact that gameplay significantly degraded as a result. Personally, I regard having to turn down gear because our stat weights are too split on value as a concrete and notable gameplay degradation. The GCD change, I don’t see as one, or at least it doesn’t feel notably worse to me (and I’ve been playing a hunter as an off-and-on main, intermixed mostly with my warlock and DH at various tiers, since Black Temple).

Whether or not you think it’s significant, it came at the cost of gameplay pace. You need 50% haste to get the GCD back down to 1.0 secs, which is not possible from current gear levels outside of niche encounter buffs. At my level of haste, and I’m very well geared, my GCD is 1.3 seconds. That’s a 30% increase in GCD over pre-7.0 levels. That is an objective assessment; numerically, we are slower. There is no disputing that. What is subjective is whether it amounts to “significant”, although that really pushes the limit of “subjective” when you’re talking about an extra 30% delay between every ability. Even at extremely high haste levels you’re unlikely going to get to a point where you can sustain even 1.1 sec (10% increase, still big); even if I used 3 stacks of ITR and my Galecaller’s cooldown I’m looking at a limit of 44% haste, and that’s temporary.

Good to see that you are still blatantly ignoring sections of my post that are troublesome for you and I’m going to go ahead and assume that it’s deliberate. If their goal was to avoid having to pass up massive ilvl upgrades they utterly failed, and the funny part is Haste is a massive reason. While it’s not as bad now, early on in the expansion Haste was so ridiculously dominant for several specs in the game that they were passing up higher ilvl gear left and right due to a lack of haste, and it could get even worse than just 15 ilvls ESPECIALLY for rings. But it’s not just Haste: all the secondary stats are, relative to primary stats, far more valuable after 7.0. This will be relevant later. The result is that passing higher ilvl gear due to unfavourable stats has arguably never been more frequent than now. So if their goal was to prevent that: they utterly failed and made the situation worse.

Don’t take my word for it (although you should because I’m 100% correct). People have been reporting pace woes all over the place, especially in BFA. Here are a couple examples from a quick search:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20764106351?page=1
https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17622582720

Gee, Hunters mentioned very early on in both threads. Hmmm…

That’s not to mention sacrificing gameplay quality for something so mathematic and abstract is still a stupid idea. You can harp on about “objectivity” all you want when it comes to game design because on some level EVERY design decision is subjective, but that does not mean they are without judgement. If they spend a bunch of time making a change that ultimately a) backfires and causes more negative effects and b) pisses everyone off, that can very comfortably be described as a stupid idea.

Don’t make me bring out the big text to stop you from skipping over important points.

It’s not that significantly slower, though. As I pointed out above, neither BM or SV would notice significant differences from a 1.0s GCD, since both already have unfilled GCDs in their rotation as is. MM would see some difference, but since 2/3rds of the rotation already isn’t GCD-limited, it wouldn’t be that substantial (it’d really just increase the number of Arcane Shots in our rotation, and as a result increase the percentage of our time we spend regening with Steady Shot, since our spammable filler would consume more focus per cast-second).

Yes, it is. Firstly, BM and SV are still primarily oriented around instant casts and are still relatively GCD-capped with low downtime. Plus, you also have things like Frenzy which would be much friendlier with a shorter GCD. Secondly, the focus regen tuning to achieve that low downtime is already assuming a longer GCD; if the GCD went back to 1.0 secs you can assume the focus regen would be higher as well, like it used to be. Hey, you could use steeper haste scaling to help achieve that while also making the stat more valuable! Thirdly, you’re assuming BM and SV should still have downtime and no active focus regen; this is still highly debatable. I think they’ve gotten better at making sure the downtime doesn’t explode to ludicrous levels like 7.0 BM but it can never truly be gone and I’m not sure I see any clear benefit to not having active focus regen.

Even MM still benefits from a 1.0 sec GCD because it still has instant casts, as much as you think it doesn’t count as it’s 1/3 instead of 100%. That’s still a lot.

Went ahead and simmed it to double-check. Overriding Arcane Shot to a 1.0 GCD (didn’t bother with Trueshot and Double Tap, since they collectively take up only ~4% of our rotation) drops our time spent using Arcane Shot, out of the average 300s fight duration, from 98.7s to 81.0s, and increases our time spent using Steady Shot from 63.5s to 79.5s (of note, how is that going to make the rotation feel faster, if we’re spending more time casting our 1.75s base cast generator?), with everything else occupying within 1.0s of the same rotational time as current (which makes sense, neither Aimed or Rapid would be effected by a change to the GCD, since they are limited entirely by their cooldowns). Total DPS rose by about 3.6%, but we can assume Blizzard would offset it with a spec aura nerf.

You’re still getting more abilities out so it feels faster. End of story. You’re also again assuming current tuning for focus regeneration. And, of course, they could always increase the degree to which haste influences resource generation so that’s an avenue for solving both issues at once without sacrificing pace.

So haste dropped in value by 9.2% and is now below even agility in value. It’s over 25% below the value of mastery, compared to ~17% below before the change.

Did you forget your earlier stance that you didn’t want to sacrifice ilvl upgrades due to poor stats? What do you think an agility-equivalent value above 1.0 means? Agility, being the primary stat, is the part that ensures that ilvl upgrades are actual upgrades regardless of stats. If the secondary stats are worth more than agility, you’re massively over-relying on the stats being close to eachother in value so when that inevitably fails you are replacing 425s with 415s or 410s, kind of like how I just got a 410 ring in my weekly chest that would be a clear upgrade over my 420 ring if not for the agility set bonus.

Another part of my posts you keep ignoring: there are other ways to keep haste close to the other stats without dependence on GCD and they were largely already working before 7.0.

And the net result? More time spent casting Steady Shot. Ya, that’s super fun.

You’re also still getting more Arcane Shots as well as anything else you have to do that uses the GCD such as traps (or any of our cooldowns, but that’s also something that should be reverted).

My priorities are just fine, thank you. Just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t mean they are objectively wrong. You are not always correct, nor do you magically speak for the entirety of the hunter community.

You can disbelieve me all you want, that’s your prerogative. But I do prefer haste-scaled GCDs. Fixed GCDs really don’t do much for MM, and they definitely don’t do much for BM or SV, and the tradeoff of haste not being as garbage is worth every bit of that change, in my book.

No, they aren’t, you’re wrong, and I am correct. See above. You can hide behind “subjectivity” all you want but in most people’s subjective opinion the haste situation is worse now and there is no objective measure by which it was a success. Already explained how you’re wrong about the second part too.

Your links are broken (The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.). Your stat weights are also wrong (where’d you pull those from anyway, Icy Veins? You know they just ballpark those for their guides, right? Those aren’t “actual” weights at all).

They’re failing due to the bonus IDs at the end. You’ll need to go to the base page and set the upgrade levels manually. The point is you’re looking at these values:

730 cape: 238 Agility, 111 Haste, 206 Mastery
716 cape: 209 Agility, 193 Critical Strike, 86 Multistrike

How would you know whether the stat weights are wrong? Yes, they are from forum posts referencing IV. Yes, those are actual weights; they come from simming a template Hunter at that gear level. While they can change depending on current gear level we were less stat-dependent back then and, as has already been said a billion times over, if there really was a concern with the value of haste there were other ways to increase its value that didn’t infringe on gameplay. It’s breathtaking how misinformed and wrong you are on this topic.

Argument to authority is only a valid criticism if my argument is Blizzard said X therefore X is correct, which was not in fact my argument. My argument was that Blizzard said so and therefore it’s most likely going to stay that way. That’s not a logical fallacy in the slightest.

Splitting hairs in its finest. You’re still falling back on “ha ha they ain’t changing it so tough luck”. Blizzard also said they wouldn’t have flying in WoD or any expansion afterwards and I remember the same argument being regurgitated in every single thread back then. Nothing is set in stone when it comes to Blizzard.

And I have little faith in Blizzard being consistent. I do, however, have great faith in Blizzard being bullheaded and stubborn, even about things they should change (and this ain’t one of them).

Yeah, and this thread has sure reinforced my faith that many forum posters can be those things too.

[Fristo-trollbane]

I agree with everything you’re saying except the rapid fire part. Even with traits it still hits like a wet noodle.

[Fristo-trollbane]

If they being back mobile aimed shot it needs to be a big damage drop off or you move 30% slower while casting it

This is coming from a mage who can blink while casting spells lmao. It would then be as powerful as arcane shot if they implemented a “big damage drop off” please stop it.

[Ksamil-malganis]

Then add a cool down equal to blink for aimed shot and not as huge of a drop off.

Also, this isn’t a mage.

[Jubilea-shadowmoon]

So I play mostly BM and MM, and I’m not going to advise on Survival because of my lack of exp on that spec.

To improve BM, I would love to get a trait to reduce Pet Dash and A of Cheetah timer by 30%. This would help a lot with Pet mobility when running around with spread mobs.

To improve MM, I would like Aimed Shot to be mobile. The long casting time is just bad for RAID that requires you to move around. I would also like a talent that would give steady shot more damage if you cast it over again. Let’s say, firing steady will increase the next steady shot damage by 10%. This can only stack 3x.

[Xaedys-thrall (Xaedys)]

Whether or not you think it’s significant, it came at the cost of gameplay pace . You need 50% haste to get the GCD back down to 1.0 secs, which is not possible from current gear levels outside of niche encounter buffs. At my level of haste, and I’m very well geared, my GCD is 1.3 seconds. That’s a 30% increase in GCD over pre-7.0 levels. That is an objective assessment; numerically, we are slower.

Yes, our GCD is slower. But as I’ve pointed out, none of the 3 specs is strongly limited by the GCD, so reducing it to 1.0s wouldn’t make the difference you think it would. We’re not in the WoD era of instacast Aimed Shot spam anymore. Again, for MM, two thirds of your time is spent using things that don’t scale with the GCD. And as I showed earlier, reducing the GCD to 1.0s really just results in you spending more of your time casting Steady Shot. Are you really going to try to maintain that that will make the spec feel FASTER?

What is subjective is whether it amounts to “significant”, although that really pushes the limit of “subjective” when you’re talking about an extra 30% delay between every ability.

No. 30% more time between instant cast abilities. GCD changes have utterly no impact at all on Aimed Shot or Steady Shot intervals, because they already are not GCD-limited.

If their goal was to avoid having to pass up massive ilvl upgrades they utterly failed, and the funny part is Haste is a massive reason. While it’s not as bad now, early on in the expansion Haste was so ridiculously dominant for several specs in the game that they were passing up higher ilvl gear left and right due to a lack of haste, and it could get even worse than just 15 ilvls ESPECIALLY for rings.

For several specs that are not hunters, and they’ve largely balanced many (though not all) of those. Them having failed at stat balancing at release is hardly a reason to embed such imbalance into our class’s fundamental mechanics.

Good to see that you are still blatantly ignoring sections of my post that are troublesome for you and I’m going to go ahead and assume that it’s deliberate.

I mean, if we want to go that route, nice if you to have completely ignored the sim data I posted that BLATANTLY DISPROVED YOUR ARGUMENT.

Yes, it is. Firstly, BM and SV are still primarily oriented around instant casts and are still relatively GCD-capped with low downtime. Plus, you also have things like Frenzy which would be much friendlier with a shorter GCD.

Frenzy has nothing to do with the GCD, you want to cast it as close to expiration as possible, not as rapidly as possible. And the downtime is exactly why these specs don’t care much about the GCD length. Sure, you’d be able to chain-cast Cobra Shot a bit faster, but then you’d be out of focus that much faster and just sitting there staring at your thumbs as you wait on regen. If you decrease the GCD for those specs, all you’re doing is increasing their downtime. You’re not speeding up their gameplay in the slightest, because they aren’t limited by the GCD, they are limited by cooldowns and focus regen.

Secondly, the focus regen tuning to achieve that low downtime is already assuming a longer GCD; if the GCD went back to 1.0 secs you can assume the focus regen would be higher as well, like it used to be.

Not sure what planet you’re playing on, but SV and BM have the same baseline focus regen they’ve had since at least Legion, and it’s higher than it was when Focus was first introduced to the class (SV and BM regen 10/s before haste, it was only 6/s when Focus was first added). Only MM got the passive regen nerfbat, and that’s because it’s the only one of the 3 with spammable regen.

Thirdly, you’re assuming BM and SV should still have downtime and no active focus regen; this is still highly debatable.

Now you’re proposing changing a substantial number of other mechanics just to prop up your desperate hope of a 1.0s GCD. Like, if you need to change other mechanics in addition to your proposal just to make it not feel like garbage, then your proposal is pretty worthless.

Still, I’ve gotten bored with your ridiculous arguments and willingness to completely ignore the massive gaping holes in your argument just because you’ve psychologically associated past mechanics with past game quality, and thus naively assume that restoring the former will magically restore the latter. Hunters played better in the past because the game devs actually cared and/or understood how to properly designed them, not because of some magical influence of a 1.0s GCD.

Fortunately, your proposal for a 1.0s GCD has about as much chance of happening as Blizzard un-pruning our abilities. So take care, keep raging in your impotent little bubble.

[Thanen-the-scryers (Thanen)]

i enjoy the current bm spec all except the mastery.they should change bm’s master to suv hunters mastery.