I somehow managed to squeeze myself into a couple of 25mans today, which is perhaps ironic because I haven’t done any WotLK 10mans yet. But hey, I’m not complaining.
The first was Vault of Archavon, the Wintergrasp Raid, which was basically just as easy as everyone said it would be. The main issue was that for some strange reason, my pet refused to attack the boss. Flat out refused. I told him to attack, he sat there. I moved closer to the boss and told him to attack again, he still sat there. He does that on the last boss of Drak’theron Keep, too, but though it’s annoying, I can live with it. A raid boss though? Ugh. Needless to say, with 50% of my damage essentially out of commission, my DPS on that fight was absolutely abysmal and embarassing. Just ugh.
The second raid was Obsidian Sanctum. I only managed to be there for the first half, but with Locke fortunately opting to cooperate this time, my performance was much more respectable. I managed to snag fourth place on the meters overall in my dungeon blues, even coming out a small hair ahead of a much better geared BW/Readiness hunter. (Far and away the overall DPS winner was a Volley-spec’d hunter who basically did nothing but spam Volley. Not even kidding.)
Really though, while it was nice to see those numbers and it was nice to see I had done so well, I still came away feeling like it was a bit of a hollow victory. Pre-WotLK, when I topped the DPS, I knew I had done so through hard work and relying on the clock in my head to time my shots. Now all I do is spam Steady and pop all my cooldowns, really only worrying about Serpent Sting if needed. I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction. And it doesn’t help when the top six or seven DPSers are all either hunters or Death Knights. I guess it is nice for getting into groups because people know you can easily deliver, but for me… it was always the feeling that I did a lot of hard work that I enjoyed the most. And I’m not getting that feeling this time.
And so I scratch my head and weigh the pros and cons and decide to stand out there on a limb and say that I’m… sort of looking forward to the nerfs. I strongly feel that with the incoming Steady Shot nerf and reduced mana cost of Arcane Shot, there will be some actual shot weaving going on again. I will be able to work hard for my spot on the DPS charts again.
And honestly, I’m looking forward to the challenge. There, I said it. If I wind up with my foot in my mouth later, I fully accept the responsibility =P
And with that said, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
I more or less agree about the nerf. There’s a point at which “really good” becomes “too good,” and when hunter pets — hunter PETS — exceed 2000 DPS on patchwerk, the line has been crossed. Though me and Rilgon could probably argue back and forth over whether the coefficient of steady shot has been reduced by too much for 50 comments, suffice it to say that I really feel as though they took away the shot rotation as a concept for BM hunters, and I’m happy to see the attempt to reintroduce it.
Now let’s just hope it works, yeah?
And volley spec? Really? Seriously? Really for seriously serious? I wish I could have seen that.
Merry Christmas, by the way. Hope yours was a good one.
The bug with Archavon happens to me to…its fixed by feigning death and your pet runs to you
I kind of feel the same way. When I find myself consistently at 40%+ of damage done in 5-mans, something is wrong.
I hear ya Pike. I can’t wait for our rotations to be a little more fun.
I’m also happy that volley is getting a nerf, ’cause that is just plain silly.
Happy Holidays!
@Sade: I think it was too much, but it was needed. If they truly want us to build shot rotations, though, they need to make our other shots affordable enough to make them attractive or severely increase or mana regeneration via Viper.
The reason we all spam Steady is because it’s just the best damn shot we have, Chimera not withstanding. I weave in Arcane (and Multi on three or more mob pulls) at the cost of extremely amplified mana expenditure to get an extra edge, but… eh.
I think Sade will agree with me, though, that Blizzard seems to have no idea what they want to do with the class.
I’m miss the feeling of weaving shots so, so much too.
A hunter friend of mine posted a BM spamming macro on our guild forums, and it made me so sad to see it. I guess these macros aren’t exactly a new thing, but I loved the feeling of manually hand-weaving shots. I always hoped that I *might* be doing a better job than the macro-spammers… and now that there isn’t “weaving” as such, I guess I’m worried that hunter DPS will be more and more of a one button deal.
So, well, I’m kinda hopeful that these nerfs and tweaks will make hunter DPS more of a challenge, more of an achievement and more interesting too!
I had exactly the same problem on Archavon, it cut my DPS by a similar amount. I managed to get my pet to attack by telling him to follow me and then attack again, but the feign trick might work too.
I’ve run Archavon twice in a 10-man. The first time, I didn’t notice until the end that my pet had been missing for the entire fight! The second time, I was paying close attention and found that my pet (who I’d sent in to attack while standing on the stairs) had once again disappeared completely. I hit Passive and a moment later she popped up next to me. At that point I sent her in again (from the flat area below) and everything was fine.
My guess is that it’s a stair bug like Karazhan had, but I can’t be sure without more testing. =\
And lo, Pike rolled a Priest, and she saw that it was hard. (At least when your better half isn’t a warrior at your side the whole time.)
I rolled a Priest first >_>;
I agree. Spamming steady shot is boring. I think good hunters will bring solid raid dps after the nerf.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I miss very much the weaving of shots. I think that’s why I’ve mainly been playing my new DK since Lich. At least I just don’t spam 0 + popping cooldowns then…
Pike and others – I have encountered a “non-existent doorway” problem with some areas in Wrath where the pet just won’t go through a doorway.
There are some areas in Warsong Hold and in Dalaran (the Legerdemain archway opposite the wine shop) for example where Bliz haven’t properly coded the doorway. As far as your pet is concerned, there is no way through to follow you, or if you are lucky, it has to take the long way round.
All we can do is report these issues as we find them.
Aye. =/ They gave us a truly unique method of DPS, then took that away, then what was left was way too easy so now they’ll likely try to reintroduce thought to hunter DPS (let’s face it, guys, steady shot spam in a post-3.0 world is mindless) little by little. Who knows what our shot rotations will look like by the time we’re all running around in T9?
For Arch, your pet will bug and stand on the stairs if you send it in before you both are off them. Just wait till then and there shouldn’t be any problems. Spamming passive seems to get them to your side if it does happen though. Same thing happens with ghouls and lock pets
I enjoy my survival spec, does a good bit of dmg (been beating out BM spec’d hunters of equal gear in both dmg and dps) and has more of a rotation. Trying to time steady shot to fire right before explosive shot and multi-shot/aimed shot (spec’d into MM far enough to get aimed shot) is pretty fun. I actually get a shot rotation going that requires some skill to fire off shots right when they come off cooldown.