Last week WHH reported on a thread generating much discussion in the Beta Classes forum: Beta Classes: Aspects are Now on the Regular GCD (Hunter Discussion). Today, Ghostcrawler made several comments in the thread.
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Ghostcrawler: A great deal of this thread is just angry venting, so I don’t anticipate being able to see a nudge it into a good discussion. Instead, I’ll attempt to explain our logic and move on. Do with it what you will.
Having an ability that you always macro because you don’t want to think about when to use it is bad game design. If you build a macro because you want to use two abilities occasionally at the same time, we’re happy. Examples of this are two cooldowns you might want to pop at once (and you also might have separate keys to pop them individually) or a buff that makes your next spell better macroed with the spell itself (provided you aren’t macroing this ability into every ability so that you’re essentially using it on cooldown). In both of these situations, you’re making the decision about when to use the macro.
Aspects are supposed to be a decision. You should think about when you want to be in Hawk or Fox. If the answer to Fox is “anytime I’m casting Steady Shot,” then that’s not a choice. If the answer to Fox is “anytime I’m moving,” then that’s not a choice. If you’re thinking “I’m going to be moving a lot for the next few seconds, so I’ll go Fox for a bit,” then that is a choice. If you’re thinking “The next few seconds of DPS aren’t critical, so I’ll go Fox to build focus back up, and then switch back to Hawk when the boss hits phase two,” then that’s a choice.
With this change, we don’t anticipate hunters to be swapping into and out of Aspects frequently. That is the whole idea of the change. We don’t think the gameplay of swapping Aspects constantly is fun, and I suspect most hunters agree. I also suspect most hunters were hoping we’d just scrap Fox altogether, and that still might happen, but it would probably also come with never casting Steady or Cobra on the move.
We have changed Aspects many times since WoW launched, and I won’t claim they have ever been super compelling gameplay. I’ll further acknowledge that it’s entirely possible that it isn’t possible to have a strong design for them, and the game is better off without them. However, before we come to that conclusion, we want to try this iteration. As a precautionary tale, we scrapped paladin Auras because we didn’t think there was much gameplay there, but plenty of paladins rallied to their defense. They missed Auras. They didn’t necessarily like the Cataclysm or perhaps any version of them, but they liked the idea and didn’t want us to give up. You all posting here individually may not miss Aspects, but I have 100% confidence we’d see them requested constantly as soon as we removed them.
We have tried, without much success, with the generic design of “there are these exclusive modal options and you pick whichever one fits the situation.” The closest we have come to success is having a tanking vs. a melee mode for Presences and Stances, but any DK or warrior will tell you that it’s hard to justify having two DPS modes. There is nearly always a right answer. If they are too situational then one just gets neglected. If they aren’t situational enough, then you’re just constantly swapping in and out. Putting things on the GCD generally adds a moment of decision making because it’s a very real cost to change your mode. [link]
Bándet: And what about for PvP Ghostcrawler? Where we need to ALWAYS move and ALWAYS maximize our damage? Not, oh, I will have to move so I can swap to fox now… and then Oh, I won’t have to move for the next 20 seconds so I can swap back. Because, mostly the entire thread was PvP issues, not PvE. Why couldn’t you just make aspects like they were previously, where each one had a use?
Oh, now we are raiding AQ so we want nature resist.
Oh, I want to run faster and I’m not likely to get hit.
Oh, I am getting zerged by melee so I need to be more defensive.
Oh, I want aimed shot to crit higher.
That is what aspects should be. We shouldn’t be required to swap simply to move while casting. Mages don’t. Warlocks don’t. They have an ability that is designed to be casted while moving, whether is it instant or not. Why not just make steady/cobra baseline castable while moving, and make fox a defensive aspect? This would also solve the huge issue of not having fox until 83. You want us to have a DPS penalty while moving? Give Hunters as a class Sniper Training, instead of just SV. There, DPS penalty for moving is built in. [link]
Ghostcrawler: Movement should be terrible for a ranged spec. Full stop. All of the various mechanics we put in from Spiritwalker’s Grace to Aspect of the Fox are to make moving less terrible, but it should still be pretty terrible. (And if you think there are specs not penalized enough by moving, please let us know, though probably not in this thread. We felt that ranged movement got a bid out of control in Cataclysm so we’ve definitely made an attempt to scale it back.) If it helps, imagine Hawk and Fox as talents. You can have higher damage, or you can cast your focus-generating shots on the move. Which do you want? It probably depends. Try them both out and see which gives you more success. (And at the end of the day, they aren’t talents, so if you really can’t bear the thought of making an exclusive choice, you can switch it. Just not for free.) [link]
Spinnerdh: I think that most of us understand the reasoning behind the change, and I understand that such a thing as aspects are hard to change because you don’t want them to be constantly switched back and forth back or only have one ever used, like just fox in PvP and just hawk in PvE except for the occasional movement lasting longer than a simple few steps and disengage over to where we need to be. I feel like one of the reasons as to why aspects are hard to balance and why they are also unfun is because they each give one definite effect. Especially in the case of hawk giving us raw ranged attack power whereas things like warrior stances, presences and even armors instead grant indirect damage increases through raised resource regeneration, a faster cooldown on runes or a buff to a side stat like haste, crit or mastery, which usually all of which have effects beyond the limits of just flatly increasing damage.
Fox has one use and that is to cast steadies and cobras while moving while hawk has another which is to simply increase damage. The system would need an overhaul like multiple other similar things got, like stances, presences and armors once again. I’m not a game designer so I don’t know exactly what would work but to me I don’t think that swapping between a flat damage increase and an obligatory movement stance is very fun, compelling or effective in terms of gameplay. I know you don’t want them to just be the same thing as other similar abilities but as they are now there isn’t going to be much that can be done for them to make them better gameplay other than just revamping aspects completely. [link]
Ghostcrawler: Yeah, that makes sense. Off the top of my head (and not promising anything) it would be interesting to try a Spiritwalker’s type cooldown where for the next X you could shoot, perhaps anything, on the move. [link]
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That spiritwalker’s comment has to be the dumbest thing I’ve seen in years. Only being able to generate reqources every 2 minutes would just kill hunter pvp altogether. And giving us rogue/feral regen would make no sense so I pray they actually try and work out a proper solution
Ouch, that is terrible.
Not only do they think the macroing was bad, they also think the gameplay I very much enjoyed (aspect switching in PvE) was also bad.
Unfortunately, This looks like it will only lead to bad things… :(
Cheers,
Gav
I agree so much with Gavendo here. To me, a raiding hunter, there was nothing wrong with aspect dancing. Having played with many unskilled hunters it clearly showed how well one played their class by looking at their aspect dancing.
That’s interesting. I’m a raiding hunter, too. Of course there’s nothing wrong with aspect dancing. But aspect dancing macros are a pain. Not just acousticly. Why:
Macro’ing aspects into each and every shot clearly makes a hunter look rather… well, “green”, having no clue or beeing to lazy to switch into the right aspect at the right time and don’t care about effectively loosing damage that way. I wouldn’t even invite such a person to my raid, no joke.
I’m really happy they stop this. Whatever stops it is good. Period. However I’m not really happy with the way how they stop it, I think an internal cooldown for the aspects would have been fine, too.
Aspect dancing is generally a sign of an unskilled or lazy hunter. Macroing Fox into your focus shot isn’t a choice, it’s a crutch and a bad use of game mechanics.
There is no fight in any tier in all of Cata raiding that REQUIRED aspect swapping. Even on Atramedes, the “move all the time fight”, you could easily sit in Hawk the entire fight (even on heroic during air phase!) if you planned your movement wisely.
Bottom line, aspects were not designed to be used the way so many hunters were using them and they’re making it so you can’t use the aspects like that anymore. The people who were making a choice to swap aspects and not using macros will not be affected. The only people who are going to notice the change will be the ones who were macroing these aspects into all their shots.
Like it or not, this is not how the game was designed to work and the developers have made it so you now have no choice but to use these abilities “properly” now.
really?
After joining a well established guild on our realm towards the end of the first cata tier, much to annoyance of their top hunter in that guild I out dps’d him by > 10% on atramedes by simply not moving and using insta-cast shots only when forced to move. He on the other hand was focusing too much on aspect dancing, and even with better gear couldn’t keep up.
ultimately, there are so few instances in any of cataclysm where you need to aspect dance, or even change aspects. Save focus, use insta shots on the move if you have to move, and always do more dps.
Again, I don’t get why people macroed aspects into every shot in the first place. I tried it once and it only gave me trouble with the 1 second aspect cooldown when I wanted to cancel a shot and cast something else (can’t give a specific example, but I very quickly found it to be less than optimal).
When learning a movement heavy fight (like Heroic Blackhorn), I’ve macro’d the aspects into my shots instead of staying in Fox the whole time just to get that extra dps boost on my instant shots. Otherwise, I use Hawk all the time in H DS, except for using Pack during ice phases on Hagara; I never find an opportunity to use Fox. Aspect dancing is just horrible in my opinion and it’s too complicated for most players; maybe the top 1% can do it effectively but not the top 25% and certainly not all hunters.
In PvE, this change will make aspects used even less than they currently are. And in PvP, everyone will just always use Fox, except maybe in BGs sometimes where the more skilled players will probably try to switch situationally.
The macros were a workaround to a bad design and that’s really the gist of it. Putting aspect switching on the GCD, makes the design worse, it doesn’t improve anything and that’s why there are so many unanimous complaints from both PvE and PvP hunters. I think Frost explained it properly “this is a nerf to dps while moving” and now GC has confirmed it. So we’ll have to wait and see how critical movement is in the MoP raids and PvP and we’ll watch the behavior of the top players, “Do they sideline hunters in movement situations? Or not?”
The cata model was the correct one, it just shouldn’t be macroable (putting it on the GCD is NOT the correct answer). I never macro’d it to my shots, and yes I do pvp and pve (7/8 heroic, 2100 rbg).
The one thing I can tell you with definate surety…..if they take fox away completely or change it to a “spiritwalkers grace” cd…we will be nonviable in pvp….at all. Hunters are currently solid in pvp (other than a lack of escapes and self heals which the MoP abilities should help), though we have a very high pvp skill cap, and will be viable in MoP even with being forced to stay in fox. I simply manually switched via a hotkey for all of cata, so staying in fox all the time isn’t so bad in pvp, but not being able to move on command while casting our focus regen in pvp = free kills for melees.
From a pvp point of view, being in fox all the time is a clear damage loss. The big issue for me is, how much damage/dps is the average hunter losing, is that amount substantial enough to suggest a buff somewhere else to compensate?
Well, I suppose with the devs could theoretically balance around the assumption that PvP hunters will be in Fox 100% of the time by boosting the the new PvP Power stat on hunter armor. But I doubt it will happen.
It is the worst change they could introduce. Come on! GC stated devs used to play rogues and recently some has mages, will any of them try at least the hunters on enjoyable level? Why was bad at all the macroing? Though I dont use aspect macros, I always prefered to switch it with hotkeys (imo those macros sucks!). It can lead to 3 things imo: 1: less overall dps so they buff us a bit, casters qq etc. 2: impotecy in pvp, they really think we only moved away from melees because of minimum range? 3: they realise nothing bad at all if hunters use macros too (have they checked any pvp wariors??) and they change it back.
I hope it isn’t because MoP raids ignore moving….
Those who macro’d every shots for pve, wouldn’t care at all for that dps loss or to think in advance about the next few secs and the possibility of they can forced to move so I really can’t understand why they tweak everything around the lfr community? Why are they punishing those who care about the little details? Without aspect dancing they can take all our shots and let autoshots only!
ps: they only should have shared one of the thousands of way, how can a hunter use aspects properly, for example with a single macro which change between macros (sooo many good macros are there and I am sure Frost gathered almost all on WHU back than, plus all the blogger hunters shared their own)
ps2: Hope its not Zumio’s fault with those awesome lifesaver guides :D keep it rockin’ master!
ps3: Frost, pls delete all videos about jump-shots, what if they see those? :P
To all the hunters posting in here. NO ONE GIVES A RAT’S @$% ABOUT ASPECT DANCING ON PVE. We’ll be just fine in PVE. It is very easy as a hunter to plan your movements ahead of time in PVE because of addons like DBM. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in PVP. In PVP you are ALWAYS on the move as a hunter. It’s not a choice, it’s a fact unless we’re talking about crappy battlegrounds but who cares about those. In arenas, a hunter is ALWAYS moving. GC said that all range classes have some sort of limitation to casting on the move but the difference is that A LOT of our damage is Physical damage which gets reduced by all the armor the enemy is wearing while all the other range class use magic damage and don’t have to worry about armor at all. Also every other range class has a cc with no cooldown while we don’t (hex, fear, poly, cyclone, and others). It’s stupid how GC wants to give us the limitations the other range classes have without the benefits. Again, please stop mentioning the aspect dancing from a PVE POV, that’s what DBM is for, so you can know exactly when you’ll have to move and plan ahead. Instead, tell GC how this last minute change is going to crap on hunters. We’re either casters or melee. If casters then make all our damage magic and give us a cc with no cooldown. If melee then let us use all of our shots while moving.
To be fair, the GCD on Aspects will also affect PvE, and those who raid do care about it. The fact that movement can be planned in PvE doesn’t mean that it can be avoided; there are some fights e.g. Hagara where there are long periods of unavoidable movement, and the GCD on Aspects will affect our performance during those periods.
This change hurts hunter PvP, but it also has consequences for PvE. You’ve overlooked the real impact on PvE, just like GC has.
Raid encounters that force us to swap will cost us 2 GCDs each time. We’ll learn to anticipate and pool when its a short move, but for longer moves this has the potential to be a DPS loss.
An unnecessary DPS loss, no other DPS class has to sacrifice 2 GCDs to be able to build resources on the move.
There are better options for forcing hunter choices during movement, options that don’t affect PvP and PvE