Disengage buffed, raid damage nerfed for hunters
by Eliah Hecht 
Oct 22nd 2008 at 2:00PM
It's good news/bad news time for Hunters in the Wrath beta. I'll give you the good news first. There are some upcoming buffs to Disengage, primarily for PvP:
- The cooldown is being lowered from 30 seconds to 25 (16 with talents).
- It no longer requires you to have a target selected; now you can slam it as soon as you see someone getting close without pausing to click on them. It does require you to be in combat, to prevent this becoming some kind of crazy Hunter Blink.
Bad news: you're getting nerfed for PvE. It seems that hunters were simply doing too much damage in level 80 raid situations, so the following steps are being taken to address that:
- Raid boss armor is being raised by 10%. This will affect all physical damage dealers, though Ghostcrawler says classes will be buffed back up as necessary (like the recent Fury buffs).
- Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons will no longer benefit ranged attacks.
If that's what they had to do to get Hunter DPS in line, fine. But I'm not really happy to see increased separation of what works on melee and what works on ranged; I'm still irritated about when ranged AP and melee AP were split and no-one knew what items and enchants affected which classes.
Filed under: Hunter, PvP, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Gnosh Oct 22nd 2008 2:06PM
It already is a crazy hunter blink. Me and another hunter were super-jumping around azeroth by dueling each other and disengaging away from the other's pet.
Gnosh Oct 22nd 2008 2:08PM
Also, first!
Yeah... I just wish DNG had a higher-angled arc... would make old-world exploration crazy awesome.
Kakistocracy Oct 22nd 2008 5:07PM
I am pretty sure that blink is already a crazy mage's blink, id est, as often as not it puts you inside of something, and you can't get out till it comes off cooldown, and when it doesn't do that, it makes you reappear right where you started. I don't think hunters want disengage to be any more like blink than it has to be.
superfrank Oct 22nd 2008 2:18PM
tank-wise the boss armour change is is a nerf to druid and warrior threat and a relative boost to paladin and death knight threat.
Rokisha Oct 22nd 2008 4:57PM
You know for the Buff to Disengage I'll take the nerfbat to the face on our damage. But how much... splash nerf damage is the rest of the physical DPS Taking?
Lemons Oct 22nd 2008 2:26PM
This seems like a rather radical change just to bring hunter dps in line. This is going to effect a bunch of other classes too! And then they're going to have to be retooled to do higher dps, and then the mages are gunna complain that rogues and warriors are op in pvp, then they're gunna get buffed, and then the shamans are gunna start whining, no reason really...they just like to whine.
All in all, blizz should just nerf huntards and save themselves the trouble of rebalancing all the other classes.
Mandydeth Oct 22nd 2008 2:36PM
I'm hearing more whining from you then anyone else right now...
Personally I think it's ridiculous to differentiate what buff works for what class.
holyground Oct 22nd 2008 3:18PM
While I love wowinsider, posting just this comment from Ghostcrawler is simply... misleading. He went into every single physical dps forum and posted the same thing.
I'm curious if you can even nerf content in development. It's not finished by definition. They use beta to test stuff, and they found that physical damage was too high on raid bosses. instead of changing each physical class, they made one small change.
As for the haste: that's a nerf. However, again, almost all of the physical dps classes were adjusted in some way.
Lemons Oct 22nd 2008 9:03PM
Well, I'm glad to learn that this fix was to bring ALL physical dps in line, and the change wasn't made for the sake of hunters alone, which made me pretty angry.
Oh, and I stand by my earlier statement, because, in context, it was totally and utterly true. Blizz would have to go and rebalanced all the other classes.
Rokisha Oct 23rd 2008 11:46AM
I'll happily take this Nerf for the improved disengage. I don't know how the other physical DPS will take it though.
Sonvar Oct 22nd 2008 2:30PM
If they're trying to nerf hunter damage then I don't see why the 10% increased armor was added. That nerfs all melee damage too while making spellcasters and death knight/pally tanks more attractive. They say they'll buff classes as needed but why did this need done in the first place? It's a dumb move that is going to require even more balancing than was necessary.
And instead of completely removing the buff from Icy Talons and Windury totem why not reduce it's effect on ranged instead of removing it altogether?
Reinard Oct 22nd 2008 2:32PM
It seems the 10% nerf was added to lower assassination rogue dps as well, not JUST hunters. This post, however, fails to mention that, and thus has you all freaking out.
It's an all-around nerf, and it was intended that way.
Reinard Oct 22nd 2008 2:33PM
To further my point:
"As I have posted a couple of times recently, we decided to raise the armor of level 83 raid bosses by 10% to correct for some dps difference between casters and melee + hunters." - Ghostcrawler
ren0 Oct 22nd 2008 2:35PM
All this says to me is that hunters need to stack armor penetration to be back on the very top of dps charts.
;)
Arcaria Oct 22nd 2008 2:52PM
What do you mean by back? I've never seen a hunter there to begin with.
ren0 Oct 22nd 2008 2:54PM
A) You must play with bad hunters
B) I was referring to back to the kind of damage they are doing right now, which most people have tested and _good_ hunters are at the top of the charts.
Arcaria Oct 22nd 2008 2:57PM
Of course I play with bad hunters. 99 percent of all hunters suck. The odds of finding a good one are slightly lower than getting the Head from HH and the pet on the same kill.
That may not be the issue though, perhaps you just play with bad rogues, warlocks and mages.
ren0 Oct 22nd 2008 3:03PM
You say this as if Rogues and Warlocks are always number 1 on dps. (P.S. in BC mages were never at the top.)
If you check out some WWS reports of the top guild *cough*sk gaming*cough*...
Their hunter is on the top of the charts. Always.
Arcaria Oct 22nd 2008 3:18PM
That maybe true for the top hunter in the top guild in the game but as a generalization. Hunters really do blow huge chunks. During the times when I'm running a pug, the only class that I'm sketchy about getting unless I know the player is a hunter. There are just way too many of you guys that have no idea what you're doing.
I would actually say the same about the tank but generally run with one of the same few guys.
ren0 Oct 22nd 2008 3:22PM
So I'm not supposed to make generalizations about hunter DPS, but you can make generalizations that all hunters are bad?
Good to know.