Responding to criticisms with data and reasoned thought is always a good idea. They may be trolling, but well thought out arguments against the trolls can be powerful in persuasion of others who may have thoughts in line with the trolls, even if not to the extreme.
At the least trolls provide us with the opportunity to present our arguments, and frankly, that is always welcome imo. I want change. The more opportunities I have to be squeaky, the more likely I will get grease.
I like how majority of the melee wasn’t even hard focusing him. Which is how we are able to die so fast. You’re basing a class off a youtube video of a guy who barely had to kite any melee cause they were too busy hard focusing the healer. Also if you watched the video closely you could clearly see everything thats utterly wrong with our spec.
Not entirely correct, but close. So Turtle Shell is a defensive, and every class has one of those. I’m hesitant to say it’s utility, but it’s really nice for Jade Masters, at least. What is nice is MM also has access to pet abilities like Ancient Hysteria, Master’s Call, and of course, Survival of the Fittest. If you’re running without a pet like me, you’re probably running Survival of the Fittest, so technically that gives you two defensives, which isn’t bad for a pure DPS class.
Freezing Trap is definitely utility: it’s one of the few forms of CC (which is definitely necessary) that don’t need to be aimed, but don’t forget about Tar Trap. Don’t forget about Concussive Shot, either: being able to pop out an instant daze with no focus cost at 40 yards is nice.
Technically, MM outperforms BM, but BM starts off much stronger at raid encounters because it enjoys full mobility until the MM player starts adapting to raid mechanics. Once the MM starts getting used things, they quickly catch up; it’s one of the reasons I find a stationary Aimed Shot to be a good idea: the skill part is knowing when to cast and not cancelling your cast. I just wish it had a faster cast, but then I remember that TS is a thing.
As for M+, I’ve listed off one large complaint that I feel limits MM in any dungeon with Reaping. Now I don’t expect one DPS to carry the load of three, but I do think that a six-target limit on AOE is a bit problematic, especially considering the setup, cast time, and focus cost involved. Now if the damage on Trick Shots was raised from 50% of the damage applied to the primary target to something higher OR the target limit was just erased altogether, that might make a difference.
That’s because maintaining a solid DPS rotation isn’t a sign of skill: addons like Weak Auras have ensured that I can track all my CDs, so I can do that all day. Concerning PVE (and to a lesser extent, PVP), the skill comes in by forcing the player to move via raid mechanics. This is what makes MM simultaneously challenging and frustrating at the same time and why BM is often seen as the ‘n00b spec’: moving in reaction to multiple raid mechanics - many with opposing objectives - while maintaining an optimal DPS rotation is the challenge. And you still need to position yourself in relation to 19-29 other players at the same time!
Like, I dunno, an example would be the Conclave. Wrath of Paku touches down so everyone gathers into the same spot, but at the same time Krag’wa has targeted the center of that safe zone while the tanks are trying to keep two bosses from getting within 15 yards of each other. And there’s a split second where you don’t know if you can maintain DPS or go into survival mode, but you certainly don’t want to lock up with indecision…and why did the tank just turn in your direction? Until it starts becoming routine, that situation can get a little…problematic.
Raid awareness is something a lot of us have taken for granted, but that’s the skill the most recent raid content has been working on (even if it means nearly every encounter involves soaking something), not how many buttons we can push or abilities we have. Sure, if it’s an ability MM needs, like a kill shot, then I’m all for it, but I’d rather not complicate a rotation just for the sake of more buttons.
The most difficult PvE content I ever did was top 500 US 10 Man Heroic Garrosh. For whatever thats worth since its been like 5 years. I did PvP after that.
The game needs more buttons for the sake of complexity and the 1 second GCD. Instead of typing a paragraph the TLDR version is that its the only way for two people playing the same class to make different decisions.
The less buttons there are the more decision making you’re taking away from the player. Movement mechanics are always present. During MoP most classes had movement negating abilities including casters, but it was still difficult.
The reason for that is because it played more like an MMORPG. Your gear (spirit/intellect) impacted how you played during a fight as a healer, how you used mana cooldowns, and how you handled mechanics. The mechanic part of that much like movement is still there, but the RPG element is removed.
Since you can’t customize spirit/intellect anymore and your buttons are limited, then the only two determining factors separating players are ilvl and class. A good example of this is the lack of disc priests in the MDI (at least from my viewing).
It used to be where good healers (even under geared) could save healing cooldowns on fights by playing better using the most effect mana efficient heals and actively coordinating abilities like mana totem/hymn on top of potions. It changed every pull because of RNG elements which was fun and added to the decision making. It also impacted group compositions*** which now doesn’t exist.
Now you are stuck with (example of rshaman) 1) efficient single target heal 2) Hot 3) inefficient fast heal 4) AoE Heal. X2 Generic Healing CDs. Its boring, and it applies to DPS/Tanks now too.
Its horrible to balance around 3-4 buttons, and ultimately its killing the game because its boring. For some people sure its going to be fun, but I’m not paying for barbed shot, cobra shot, kill command that barely been touched since Legion pre-patch. You can MoD skyrim to be more complex than that.
Video alone in description you can see what we skipped from group comp/skill, and what abilities we used that now don’t even exist in the game because they’ve removed so much utility over time.
I played Ele. Now you barely have to manage totems or healing; it begs the question if you can even consider the way it plays now even like a shaman. (Can say this for all classes)
IE during Heroic Garrosh 25 Man Enhancements used to throw down healing rains, I think they could even do that in Legion, now they pruned it.
Little tricks, stance dancing, totems are what give classes flavor and allow people to separate themselves. Without that the game is RNG simulator + Ilvl.
10-man Heroic Garrosh was indeed difficult. I think I did it at 25-man, but back then, Survival was a ranged DPS spec with no movement penalties. The pacing of the raid encounters has now gotten much faster, but our characters have gotten less capable since that time. We have more raid mechanics to deal with, but a smaller toolbox this time.
And the reason I say that more buttons won’t help is you’re still going to have a hard-hitting DPS ability, and then a series of lesser DPS abilities with some sort of restraint attached to them - focus cost, CD, maybe the damage is just too low - it’s always going to be a really good button and a couple of buttons that aren’t as good in varying degrees. Why complicate it for the sake of complication by saying here’s 30 buttons when you can have five buttons with very distinct purposes?
But the MM I’m running at the moment has 11 abilities ready to go at any given moment, and that’s not including CC, defensives, exhiliration, DPS potion, and lock rocks. Hell, I’ve been stumbling over this fancy MMO mouse just trying to get used to the new layout.
And this is after Blizzard has been doing its best to make the game less complicated but more complex. And as I’ve said before, the weight of the difficulty of the game has gone from optimizing your character’s stats to raising your raid awareness and adapting to ever-increasingly complex raid mechanics because our PCs and the servers can handle multiple raid mechanics all firing off at once now. As a point of comparison, it would be akin to switching from MS Flight Simulator 2000 (where most of the complexity is in the complicated technical aspects of the plane) to Ikaruga (which is probably before your time, but look it up on YouTube because most of the complexity is learning how to juggle two buttons - shoot and switch) or Touhou. Skill can be measured in many ways.
You’re right it can be measured in different ways, but there is a cap on raid awareness with how much they can push players. The same is too for complexity in rotation as well.
The difference being the game was more successful with subscriptions when it was rotation based (ignoring the fights like Garrosh/LK/Ragnaros which were rotational and awareness demanding).
I’m going to make a subjective statement and also say I had way more fun.
The PvP part of this game will suffer indefinitely from PvE if they keep up with this design philosophy focused on movement. 3-4 buttons is incredibly boring and stagnant, I also don’t see how they will keep people throughout expansions doing this.
As an MMORPG managing your stats should be more complicated then (main stat, 4 off stats).
MM at its core is Aimed, Arcane, Steady, Rapid Fire, and MultiShot. There is almost zero interaction with the exception of master marksman and trick shot. Maybe you have a total of 11 buttons, but its a glaring issue when you go out to somewhere like Durotar or Arenas and can’t even compete (I’m 2.4k Exp and I have to cheese people in duels).
There was also a noticeable lack of hunters in MDI when I was watching at least.
Causation does not equal correlation. Just because you had more fun in college does not mean your life was better than it is now.
The game was at its peak when WOTLK was out and MMOs were all the rage for social gaming. WOW wasn’t perfect, but it was the easiest MMO to get into, the one with the easiest grind, the easiest one to learn, and the easiest one to find stuff to do. The same couldn’t be said for EVE Online, EQ, FFXI, or the deluge of now-dead and forgotten MMOs from that time period (RIP Asheron’s Call). It was a Triple-A title in a time when there weren’t a lot of Triple-A companies.
However, nowadays Triple-A development companies are everywhere and WOW faces stiff competition from quality games that are not only F2P on multiple platforms, but - and don’t kill me for mentioning this - can be played on a mobile device. (The only other game that holds my attention besides WOW is a mobile game called Final Fantasy Record Keeper, and I’ve barely dropped a dime into it for two years!) This doesn’t mean that WOW is bad, it just means people would rather play free games or games with a fairly low up-front investment cost.
I played MoP while I was in college so I don’t know about that.
You right though, but to me as it is now I can’t pick up playing any class that keeps me playing like I used to. There’s no feeling like there used to be where I wanted to log on as soon as I got home everyday. For me it was even like that a bit during Legion (but not as strong).
Food for thought for people thatll read it I guess. But Blizzard will have to do a lot more to change in order to win much of the unsubbed player base back. Maybe classic will fix that I’m unsure, we’ll have to see.
Actually, he was just disproving the statement that MM was unplayable in arena. Remove your head from your rear and read…
Appears to be on topic and supports an opposing view point – Check
Completely ignores everything that’s actually been said – Check
Insults someones intelligence – Check
Insults someone personally to entice a heated response – Check
Does all that concisely – Check
Is sufficiently subtle to seem like a sincere post – X
8/10
Oh, believe me, I feel that too. It usually takes a bit for every expansion to hit their stride - I consider MOP to be among the best expansions, but it didn’t get good until TOT was released, WOTLK didn’t become a classic until Uldar, Nighthold cemented Legion’s place as one of the 'good expansions - but it’s taking extra long with BFA, and that’s probably because nobody is happy with the way things have been turning out right now.
I guess that’s one way to ignore the fact he did exactly what you said couldn’t be done…
Do you mean…
Of course by “not viable in PvP” it was implicit that I meant it was not viable in organized PvP. I didn’t mean you couldn’t engage in PvP at all, like; I didn’t mean that MM couldn’t queue for arena and RBGs. I meant they weren’t good enough to be even slightly competitive.
If you paid attention to my post above I most certainly did not ignore his “proof”, rather I refuted his anecdote with actual data taken from the game from the two most used sources on the subject. They don’t agree precisely in the numbers (though they are very close), which means they use slightly different metrics for how they pull the data or analyze it. But they do agree on the placement of MM in the scope of all other classes. That placement is not only dead last out of all DPS, it is dead last by a lot. It is as low as 0.0%.
I’m not sure what numbers you would suggest could be used to show viability, but I would suggest using the ones available. Over the past few thousand years, this method of gathering substantial information has proven a better method for basing decisions on than anecdotes that may not apply. In this case that anecdote is an edited video that if you actually watch it supports my arguments more than any opposing one.
I have laid out specifics of how it does so in a post above. I am guessing you haven’t read it or didn’t care. You only seem care about keeping the conversation going for whatever twisted enjoyment you seem to get out of it. “Watch me make this hairless monkey dance” perhaps.
You want 1 second GCD, yet:
You wait for classic.
You gonna have fun with the same GCD, i don’t think so.
You wanna insult my intelligence but yet you refuse to see the issue about a class you probably don’t even main since you’re posting on an alt. It’s like talking to a brick wall so i’m done feeding the troll. Hopefully others will be done with your incessant chatter about nothing that contributes to the topic of discussion.
You being bad does not equate to the class being bad. I have no problem getting into rbg’s as mm. I won’t speak for arena cause I’m smart and play Sv instead of whining about my spec being bad.
I have no problem getting into pug RBGs either. BUT, the data shows there is somewhere between very, very few and zero teams that make it above 1800 IF an MM is on the team. 1800 is not a high bar. In fact it is the absolute lowest bar that exists in the “competitive” range. This is why I say MM is not viable in competitive PvP, because virtually no one makes it into the competitive range playing MM. In arena specifically I have only seen a couple videos, and they were both being carried by an exceptional Ret’s CDs.
Now, maybe the data is the way it is because everyone just sucks, or thinks they will suck. Perception is strong. Maybe that one guy that was provided as “evidence” with his edited video of low level mostly 2v2 skirmishes, that was never being trained by melee, had it all figured out and the rest of the world is full of dolts. I can’t prove that isn’t the case. But here in the real world successful people make decisions based on facts over supposition.
The fact is MM has no representation in competitive PvP. The fact is I personally am awful as MM when I am being trained by two melee, even with a healer. The fact is against one good melee my win percentage is awful 1v1. The fact is the exact opposite of both of those statements was true during the 8 years from WotLK to WoD. The fact is I hear this complaint from everyone who tries to play MM in PvP, even from those few who have achieved higher rating.
Based on those facts I have come to the conclusion that it is not just that we haven’t figured it out, but that it is not viable as is. Could that be a false conclusion? Yes, but I don’t come to conclusions based on all the evidence that might be available in the future, but rather the evidence that exists today. At the same time I keep my mind open to the possibility of changing my conclusion if new evidence presents itself. The video posted was not new evidence since it did not show the ability to overcome the deficits that we have been talking about for a year.
Use a pet, problem solved.
This is why they shouldn’t add hunter utility to pets. Sure it is there but mm hunters should not be forced to sacrifice damage for utility. I can’t think of any other class that has to do that.
They should look into marks hunters being able to use the pet utility with lone wolf or make pet utility abilities only accessible for bm and survival and give mm set utility.
I would even take some sort of channel action to configure what utility we want so it can be not efficent to switch in combat.
Back in the day there was a valid argument for sacrificing throughput for utility. However the way other classes are designed now they don’t have to choose. The only way to balance having to choose would be if you choose dps then you should do more dmg then others but we don’t do that.