Grumble N Autumnn: NEWSFLASH: Hunters beaten like a Red Headed Pally

Ghostcrawler made a post today about the up coming Hunter nerfs. These are the changes they will be putting into the PTR so these are not set in stone atm. Needless to say Grumble and I was cussing him out. Yeah we were doing some nice DPS but ya can't help but get the "Damn the Man and his Ban Hammer" feeling.

1) Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).

Less ATK PWR means less damage.

2) Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AoE 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.

This sucks. We really like AoE pulling with our Gorilladins.

3) Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.

SCREW YOU GUYS! I was so excited when I saw Readiness was moved into the MM tree and able to be used with the BM tree.

4) Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.

This will be interesting. Though you cannot attack, if you are in an arena team and you are down to the wire that 5 seconds could be enough time for your teammates to take down the person attacking you. In a PvE standpoint, that 5 seconds you are not attacking means so long as you have a good tank they will be gaining argo and hopefully passing yours.

5) Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).

This is a surprise being in a nerf patch. Being full instance buffed I have gotten over 8k crits with Kill Shot. Just self buffed I can usually get around 3-5 k easily.

6) Kindred Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.

It's a 5% drop in DPS for your pet. I am trying to be optimistic so... atleast it isn't more...

7) Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. (EDIT: Still grants the current bonus to the hunter.)

See the note that BM hunters are not affected by this, only their pets. BMs will still have Steady Shot as fast as the Global Cooldown.

8) All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.

9) Growl— threat generation increased by 20% (same for Voidwalker Torment).

This is nice. When I am just questing or farming I have only used my gorilla because none of my other pets can keep argo without me having to do high maintainence like MDs, FDs, and Shadowmeld.

10) Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.

Eh, sucks for party members but isn't hurting our DPS.

11) Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.

/whispers "Yet there has been SSs of Devilsaurs doing more damage than their hunters."

12) Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.

No more complaining about Spirit Beasts having gimped DPS. They are good pets and with Rake getting chopped up again I am seriously thinking about getting a SB.

Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.

So now so long as you are tracking with one of the Hunter Trackings you will get the increased damages for any of the families of mobs included in our Tracking System.