Ghostcrawler is answering questions regarding Class and Set Bonus Issues in Patch 5.2 on the official Warcraft forums. This post continues our coverage of hunter-related issues in those threads.
Rune of Re-Origination Trinket
Ghostcrawler: Rune of Re-Origination
We’re going to make some changes to this trinket based on testing and feedback. Our goal was to make it decent if you didn’t game it at all but offer some opportunities for enhanced benefits if you did. We’re going to try to meet that goal better with these changes:
- 10 sec duration (down from 20 sec) but with double the proc rate.
- Increase your highest secondary stat by 200% of the sum of your two lowest secondary stats. For example: you have 3500 mastery, 5000 crit, 7000 haste. Rune procs, and you get [-3500 mastery, -5000 crit, +17000 haste]. Same logic as before, just double the size of the buff to your highest stat.
[source]
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Recently announced SV/MM buffs
Yuyn: As someone who’s main-specced Beast Mastery through most of his hunter career, these adjustments concern me about the implications for spec balance. Rough estimate, this seems like it’s about a 5% adjustment upwards for Survival, and closer to 10% adjustment upwards for Marksman (maybe more if the rotation changes from 5.1 to favour Aimed Shot more). […] [source]
Zeherah: For what it’s worth, my initial sims after applying these changes put the 3 specs extremely close together for single target (although BM was very slightly ahead). BM provides higher burst if the situation warrants it and SV is stronger for multi-target/AoE. MM doesn’t really excel at either which may hold it back even with the changes but the numbers should be fairly close from what I can see. [source]
Voodoou: How does the sim make them even with these changes when Surv and BM are already even. Surv is getting a decent buff with this and BM nothing. MM really needed the buff.. no one is arguing this but BM does not deserve to be put as last place of the three.. hell its the core of the class itself! Other than BC BM gets crapped on EVERY expansion.. grr I just want to be able to play my preferred spec the whole way through an expansion. [source]
Zeherah: Based on sims, logs and general knowledge, BM has been a bit ahead on single target fights for this entire tier. The buffs to SV brought it closer but BM was still ahead (especially when extremely high burst periods are required). I understand the concern about BM possibly getting left behind as has happened in previous expansions, but the best possible outcome for all hunters is for all 3 specs to be close enough that people can actually play what they like or what is best suited for the particular fight. BM has been on top long enough to get respect back, so evening out the specs at this point shouldn’t drive all the BM hunters back into a cave.
For every BM fan there is someone who absolutely hates BM and doesn’t want to play it. I’m really glad to see Blizzard is trying to find a good spec balance for hunters and I hope they’re successful. They said they’re still looking at AoE balancing so hopefully they will address BM being weak on the AoE front so SV isn’t the only good choice for that. I’m also hoping they’ll eventually give SV/MM access to some of the BM only buff/utility pet abilities so that in 10 mans with limited options hunters don’t feel forced to play BM, but we’ll see what happens there. [source]
Yuyn: Out of curiosity, what sort of gear level did you test this at? Or was it at a few different points showing roughly the same thing? As I noted initially, I’m totally unsure of the implications for scaling of these changes, as it did seem like BM scaled somewhat better with gear (though, again, I’m going on rough estimates here) in T14 on single-target — meaning, if that’s indeed accurate, it might make weird things happen at lower or higher gear levels. […] [source]
Zeherah: These were initial sims I ran last night just to test that the changes were working, and it was using the gear I’m wearing. So it’s quite possible that at different configs we might see different results (you can use my site to see what results you get with different setups) and I expect the numbers will come out a bit differently using simc since it works differently, but I haven’t had a chance to check with Lokrick and see what results he’s getting. I will note that I am wearing 4pc T14, which definitely favors BM over SV, so without that the numbers would likely come out a bit differently- the bonuses seem a lot more even for the 2 specs in T15.
I should also note that the MM numbers I got are probably a bit low and it might actually be above BM, since MM requires a lot more configuration to get good results and I didn’t spend a lot of time optimizing my MM config.
Just looking at a few of my logs, SV is looking at about a 3.5-4% damage increase from these particular buffs, which would be lower on AoE fights where you’d be using less explosive shots and possibly explosive trap instead of black arrow. I’m assuming Blizzard targetted that amount of dps increase based on what they’re seeing with their internal numbers on the gap between the specs, and if it turns out they missed the mark they may tweak things a bit more. Looking at some log results for various fights that are mostly single target, it looks like the BM to SV gap is around that amount, although of course logs are distorted by selection bias.
[source]
Ghostcrawler: This is why I added the caveat that you can’t just take the 5.1 environment and mentally add buffs or nerfs. My advice here if you can’t test it yourself on the PTR is to trust your theorycrafting community and see where they think everyone will end up in 5.2. (Zeherah made a post up above.) [source]
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Beastial Wrath
Agathorn: Hey GC, since all the other hunter specs are getting a buff can beast mastery have its “BW pet immunity back? The reason I asked is due to the fact that the reason behind the nerf was totally false: Stating that bw was causing the pets unleashed by stampede were benefiting from the bw immunity. The nurf hurts bm very hard in pvp and even worse in pve especially when it comes to soloing old content. The nurf makes it too easy to shut down a bm hunters primary damage source whereas dot class face no such challenge from mobs though more so from players. [source]
Ghostcrawler: You’re conflating two issues. Stampede had a bug causing it to do too much damage, which we eventually found and fixed. At the same time, we also wanted to tone down all of the “because I’m immune to everything I’m going to come beat your face in” cooldowns. We deeply regret having so many “I’m immune to everything” mechanics. We don’t think they are good for PvP overall, even though it can be fun to beat someone’s face in while they have no recourse. Anything uncounterable is probably something we are trying to phase out in PvP. [source]
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