Hunters Getting Nerfed, DKs Getting It Both Ways & Mages Getting Buffed
iTZKooPA on Thursday, December 11, 2008 - 52 Comments Tags: 100 mounts, Achievements, Death Knight, Patch, achievement rewards, buff, class changes, content patch, mounts, nerf, patch 3.0.8, patch notes, ptr 
Mages, Death Knights and Hunters definitely need to be aware of Ghostcrawler's most recent posts. The face of the forums has tore it up over the last two days, announcing changes to all three classes that are sure to upset some, but will having others jump for joy.
Some of the changes he listed are now part of the just posted v3.0.8 PTR notes, which include a new mount-based Achievement, complete with an exclusive mount as the reward. Although this probably isn't exactly what the people QQing in the comments of this post had in mind, it is a start. An expensive start considering if you bought ground epic mounts for half of the required 100 mounts, you'd be dropping something like 5000g. And I don't think there are even that many available. So let's just call it a crapton of gold.
I will just start this off with the bad news. Dorkins, prepared to be nerfed to the ground. Ghostcrawler's notes specifically mention that Hunters, PvE Beastmastery Hunters to be more specific, are doing too much god damn damage for Blizzard's liking. While the designers hoped other classes would catch up to them, they haven't, thus comes a series of nerfs. The developers figured the best way to hurt PvE damage, while skirting the PvP balance issue, would be to heavily modify Steady Shot and Volley. Ouch!
From the blue:
- Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
- Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
Death Knights are getting the opposite treatment of Hunters. The changes to the newest and most populous class - for the moment – revolve around modify tanking a good deal, while reducing their defense capabilities for PvP. Those PvEers out there, specifically the ones who rolled a DK for tanking, should be excited. From my understanding of the changes, and the class, the PvP modifications aren't nearly the nerf that Hunters received on the PvE end. Blood Aura doing double the healing...think I may go Blood when I return to my DK.
As for our faithful Blinkers out there, some of you will be happy to hear that you have a buff coming your way. I quantified that previous sentence with 'some' because the buffs only apply to those mages that are Arcane spec. To be honest, I do not know, and possibly have never known, a mage that was Arcane spec. Nonetheless, Blizzard will has decided that that particular spec needs a hand, going so far as to completley redesigning the Arcane Blast ability.
- Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15/30/45%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.
To sum it up, we have Hunters' PvE being super-nerfed with a buff in survivability for PvP. Death Knight's Blood spec is more attractive for tanking, with tanking mechanics relying less on cooldowns and a small nerf to their defense in PvP. Arcane Mages get a nice bump in damage, however, Blizzard is keeping a close eye on them to see if they become too powerful in PvP, or the class in general taking the lead in PvE damage output.
As for me, my two main characters have barely been touched. Fan of Knives is now better, but my rogue lacks the ability, so blah. Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown, instead of just the global cooldown. That sucks, but I hated spamming it so much anyways.
Reader Comments (52)
maybe a little less QQ when i tank in blood spec, woot
Walocks got nerfed too, have some sympathy for us :) But really, in someway I do aprechiate the Hunter nerf, lets see whos on top of the DPS chart now ^^
Damn hunter nerfs
Actually Spudnik, warlocks are getting buffed, and my bro (a lock) always gets best DPS...
Wah lol us BM hunters are getting extremely nerfed :(
If blizz really nerfs hunters, I am quitting WoW. I have been thinking about quitting after 3 years for a while now. With this nerf I am definitely out.
Hunters have been neglected for far too long and now after we finally have some nice dps, they think about nerfing?
There will be more people pissed with the same response, leaving WoW, and that ironically will nerf Blizzard them selvs for sure, :-)
at Lee Andrew...... really? hunters have been so neglected? what game are you playing? happy to see someone like you leave.
ps... sorry for bringing more negativity to the thread.
Hmm i wonder if our hunters are so crappy, they're never in top5 even have to fight for top10. Oo
druids getting nerfed too (ferals) again, with Thick hide and SotF no longer applying to armor from trinckets and rings, only to armor from leather or cloth armorpieces. Another painfull nerf for Tanking druids and we allready miss so much compared to TBC.
As for Arcane mages: I know one verry good mage (runned Sunwell in TBC) that's Arcane. According to him this specc has the best PvE abilities because you're able to do heavy damage while keeping aggro verry low (to almost none)
Huntards: hey your doing too much damage allready, it's not fair to others that with lesser speccs you do more damage because you happen to have that pet. Balancing out is a good idea.
i dont agree hunters being nerfed.....we are being neglected....and now this.... it sucks. stupid thing to do.and palys...they should be nerfed. but no.... hunters were never overpowered, like palys or dk.....and now, when we finally do more damage, let's destroy that. im disapponted. ahhh ....
i just created my hunter like 4 or 5 days ago...and i like him so far.. he is only a lvl 24 orc hunter but sill alot of fun. and i dont see how hunters are overpowered. because a paladin in this guild i was in would tank oculus and we had 2 hunters. and his dps was twice the amount then theres. and he was a tank for peet sakes. so if that isn't overpowered to blizzard and think that hunters do too much damage in BM spec....then why have a hunter. if they dont like how a certain class does so much damage. then why have them. it is like. someone is going to find a way to make the nerf that they do and make it to were that class is over powered.
and it wasn't oculus it was nexus. i was watching project lore take on the oculus and got that stuck in my head. but it was nexus...
I like the changes for shamans
lol in one of the project lore episodes zand was talking about how blizzard would watch the episodes and see how overpowered and zand was and nerf him down...foreshadowing? lol
Good on koopa,no mages specced arcane :S It's THE pvp/pve spec of WotLK.Arcane was great endgame of BC and now they've even improved it!
FFB spec is the raiding spec right now with arcane and fire behind it. The problem with arcane was the lack of a real rotation and thats what they were trying to fix. I'm sure it will be op in pvp as no one really has resil/hp gear. As for hunters, they have had the top dps for wotlk so far and in TBC they were still good at end-game.
I just recently switched from arcane to fire for the crit bonus and free pyro charge every handful of frost fire bolts that bumped my raiding dps from about 1.8k/s to 2.0k/s it looks like this change will put my old arcane spec back in line with my current fire spec dps wise apparently at the cost of much mana though. Plus arcane is more versatile than the cast heavy fire spec making it easier to throw out a few de-curses without having a huge impact on your dps. I can also see the dps change for hunters as in many a raid I've seen under geared hunters are cranking out about 3k dps while still wearing blues from BC.
Anyone knows if they will do something for the boomkin...
cuz god i miss so much mana all the time....driving me crazy...
anyone has the answer for that ?
STEADY SHOT.....NOO!!!!
this will not be pretty for us hunters...
i dont see why they have to always do this.....seems they keep on over powering the mages and down powering the other classes. it really sucks.
I LOVE YOU BLIZZARD
TY FOR BUFFING MAGES
CAPS LOCK FTW
I am not a fan of the cat form of the druids, i think its a lil OP and even being a hunter is is OP i am barely keeping up with my guilds feral druid, so hopefully they will be nerfed
If they are nerfed just post a comment informing me thanks you project lore viewers
Ouch, Hunters like Dorkins and I will NOT be thankful for this.
Totally against the entire idea of hunters being in this game. Every other class is cool except hunters. Shaman, Druid, Warlock, Warrior, Rogue, especially Death Knights even though there are a ton of them right now - they all have a place in WoW. Hunter? wtf - be more boring why don't you.
Hunters didn't get it that bad, if your a hunter do the math, your still going to be number 1 on the chart if your there now. Mages need the love and I have to say that locks & rogue are just not that hot right now. I totaly believe that the chats should go Mage, rogue, hunter.