Everytime I try to come back to this game I just can’t enjoy it like I used to. I miss MM not having to stop moving to do dmg. I miss having multiple instant cast shots. All of the specs just feel off to me.
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During Cataclysm Aim Shot alway had a cast timer. The only time it became instant is when you reach five stacks of “Master Marksman” and to reach that five stacks you will be constantly spamming “Steady Shot”. During Cataclysm Aim Shot was one of the weaker and lower priority shot for MM. Here how MM hunter actually rotation look like in Cataclysm.
- Steady Shot Spamming
- Chimera Shot on CD
- Arcane Shot to dump focus
- Aim Shot only when you have 5 stacks.
Either you was playing a different hunter during Cataclysm because you have no raid history on this hunter. I don’t think you really remember how Aim Shot was a weak 2 sec cast shot on it own. MM hunter during Cataclysm was more focus on the “Readiness” skill which basically refresh all your shot on a 3 minute CD.
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I think it was 2.9s. It might have been reduced by something (other than Master Marksman). I don’t remember. But yes, otherwise I agree with your assessment. I was not a big fan of Cata MM for that reason. It was an RNG combo points system. Yuck.
I don’t know how you guys remember all that stuff… do you look it up or something?
I guess I have other things consuming my brain cells.
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survival is absolute tryhard trash and im lacking keybinds for it, mm is a gimmick by now and bm is trash aswell not to mention it doesnt do anything when the pet bugs out. god i miss cataclysm so much
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I tried to look it up but couldn’t find it. That was a number I remember for some reason. It’s been a while and could very well be wrong. I just remember it took forever to cast Aimed Shot. Longer than now.
It’s honestly hilarious to see people say this. Such proof of the concept of rose-tinted glasses. I remember back in Cata. People hated that expansion. It was widely regarded, at the time, as the worst expansion Blizzard had produced. Now people can’t get enough of Cataclysm nostalgia.
I also don’t understand why people dislike current MM. Since the 8.1 fixes/improvements (which they should have done during Beta, but they just kinda abandoned MM half finished), it’s a really fun spec. It has solid burst and AoE, is generally more mobile than most casters (ya, I know, Maso, let’s not get back into that discussion), and overall just plays fairly well.
Yes, it has some quirks and issues. RNG Precise Shots distorts the talent landscape more than it should, and Rapid Fire still feels…weird, both as such a long channel and as a generator. Our AoE still has this weird arbitrary minimum and arbitrary maximum, despite them having the tech in the game to uncap our AoE without just letting it scale infinitely (PBAoEs and ground-target AoEs already scale down in damage once you’re hitting a certain number of targets). And we still have a fair chunk of talents that are generally pretty useless.
But overall, at least since 8.1, I’d say I’m a fan of MM. The shift back towards using Rapid Fire and Aimed properly feels a lot better than the Steady Shot built in 8.0, and the new version of Trueshot feels amazing compared to the old version (though I do wish it lasted a bit longer). The new Trueshot is also insanely potent in AoE situations, and Calling the Shots is hands down the single most potent CD reduction effect in the game, usually roughly halving the CD on Trueshot in practice.
It’s definitely a sight better than the cluster that was Legion MM (yes, I know the Marked Shot build was pretty fun for AoE, but I hated the Vulnerability mechanic in Legion, and Patient Sniper can stay dead for all eternity), and generally better than most prior renditions as well. HFC was more or less the hay-day of MM, but even at that point, the rotation wasn’t exactly complete or super engaging. HFC was literally just Glaives on CD, Chimera on CD, Steady for focus, Set-Bonus-Instacast Aimed to dump it. The only “depth” was optimizing the mastery uptime.
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There are two major issues with any Hunter Spec in Cataclysm.
They did not finish the development until the MoP Pre-Patch.
Focus Regeneration was too low and effected by Casting Slows, and they knew it.
I hated Cata. I still do. It also amazes me when people say this. I especially hated it for MM (how out of touch do you have to be to build an RNG combo point system?) In fact I hated it so much that like Legion, I quit the game for quite a while because of what they did to my favorite spec.
I agree with everything you said, but you are missing so much at the same time. I really wish you did PvP. There are just so many things you simply can’t understand without the experience of playing the spec in such an environment. I may or may not reply to your last thread. While working on a response I have some points that may get you to understand. I didn’t finish the reply though. I may get back to it.
In PvP, MM is a very ineffective spec. It can only do one meaningful thing reliably in PvP, and that is burst. All the other things it was meant to be good at (and is obviously designed for) it isn’t good at, including doing any damage while moving, surviving with mobility and battlefield control, and actually landing a kill. In fact it is terrible at those things.
Having said that, I also don’t hate it. I play it, but only enough random BGs to get my weekly PvP loot. I am keeping my gear up, hoping they fix it. The spec is so close, but at the same time it is so far away as to be currently useless in PvP.
So I don’t know that it is “hatred”, but rather frustration. It’s so easy to see what it could be if they just fixed the glaring issues we have discussed ad naseum since beta.
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I’ll acknowledge that in PvP, it’s not exactly amazeballs. And to be honest, it’s middle of the pack at best in M+, really only being propped up by lust and magic/enrage purge. I was talking more from a design perspective. I won’t necessarily say this is my favorite version of MM, but it’s a fair cry from my least favorite (which is a toss up between 8.0, early-legion MM, and Black Temple’s Fel Mana potions every 2 minutes, spam Steady Shot macro ad nauseum iteration).
…It’s a bit painful how much that can describe basically this entire expansion. It’s got a lot of potential, but the Devs seem completely and utterly blind to the blatantly obvious fixes the rest of the community can see clear as day.
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They didn’t finish until pre mop, kinda.
Regen only affected marks. They needed a faster Regen and a better way to get to aimed shot. Master marksmen stacks were crappy and slow to build with not enough reward. And since marksmen had no real sustainable dmg except from it’s mastery(it was a bleed named piercing shots that worked off of crits)…it suffered. Was clunky without good amounts of haste and crit. Even then it under performed. In PvP it was good as long as you ran with either a warrior/dk/ret/druid. Needed someone to run people off the pole humping. But could burst you down pretty quick
Beast mastery was decent but needed some rotational work/cleave. It kept up really well single target but since beast cleave wasn’t introduced until prepatch mop, it suffered as well since so many of those fights had add phases. It did scale better then with mastery but it shared a lot of shots with the other two specs making it have an identity crisis. Though it had several broke. PvP days from lynx rush and stampede lol
Survival had a good rotation(Regen with cobra shot). Advanced traps worked well with handling adds, adding extra crit or movement speed and from bwd forward, it was just solid. The only thing it lacked was a little bit of burst. Rapid fire(40% attack speed bonus) didn’t really help it. All it had really was sustained and cleave. So it did really well after 3-5 second build up time. Common of dot classes though now in PvP it suffered because you could cleanse all the dots it produced and didn’t have the burst it needed to be competitive in 2s, 3s etc.
Each spec had it’s pros and cons. Sadly marks had the roughest time while beast mastery and survival shined a good bit
I thought MM in WOTLK was the best. I hated when they took away mana for focus.
They literally took away aspects and true shot aura and replaced them with burst CDs.I hated what they changed.Therefore I hated MM in cata for personal reasons.
I tried MM in cata and mop and was unimpressed. I didn’t play hunter again until Wod and made this character BM because I still disliked how MM felt. Even in legion I couldn’t play MM. It felt ok but wasn’t very fun to me.
As of 8.1.5 I finally enjoy the spec that got me playing wow in the first place. If MM had just a bit more survivability, or a stun,or something to help PvP I don’t think I’d switch out of it. Might even make it my main again.
I hated cata and still do
Agreed
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No, it did all three but it was more of a PvP problem than a PvE one. That was why everyone asked why they made the fix a raid 2pc set bonus.
True, but only one Spec has a talent that still cost Mana.
You probably correct on the 2.9 sec. I don’t remember the actual number but MM Aim Shot during Cataclysm was not that great like the poster seem to think it was.
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Cata was pretty fun. SV in pre-nerf heroics was some of the most fun I’ve had on my hunter. MM in firelands was also pretty fun. BM was mostly useless the whole xpac I don’t think I ever swapped to it.
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Interesting, but this was published when Cata was in Beta. A lot changed after that, though I don’t recall the exact timeline. I watched the first five minutes and the commentators knew nothing about MM.
Not to derail, but you know what I miss? MM from Ulduar to ICC. I didn’t care that I had to stand still, but I loved watching ArPen work with Piercing Shots and Aimed Shot to make things bleed to death.
It was a concept that I really wished carried onto Mastery - instead of a damage bonus, your Mastery just let you ignore armor and apply a bleed. Instead, we got…Bombardment.
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cata-mop MM was the golden age
PVP wise, that is. Old survival was by far the most fun pve spec before legion
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Mana can absolutely stay dead. I remember chain-chugging Fel Mana pots in Black Temple. I remember feeling worthless for half a minute while I spammed Steady Shot in one of the aspects (Viper, I think?) to regen. No, that crap was terrible.
Frankly, mana was never a thrilling mechanic for DPS period. The entire notion of mana is that you have unlimited short-term resources, but eventually run out of stamina and stop, which just isn’t practical for a DPS, especially if you don’t have the ability to control your mana usage. Removing mana as a mechanic from all DPS specs (except arcane, which uses it sorta like a slower and deeper energy pool) was one of the best design decisions they ever made.
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