Filed Under: Patches, Talents // Tags: Analysis, Changes, Mechanics
There’s a short post up on the Hunter Beta forums this morning that rocked my world. I don’t mean that in the sense that I thought it was really and truly awesome, but more in the sense that it literally put my entire perspective on it’s head.
Aimed Shot Goes Instant Cast
For a long, long time now, Aimed Shot has been considered largely useless. It had it’s minor situational usefulness, but was otherwise largely ignored and looked down upon. Aimed Shot in your shot rotation? Hah! I should think not. (The other hunters are laughing at you.)
But what has always been at the heart of our complaints about Aimed Shot? That the cast time made it obsolete. Because it clipped Auto Shots and the long cast time made shots of shorter cooldowns/cast times more efficient, Aimed Shot was dropped from most shot rotations.
The changes in the Beta (that Auto Shots cannot be clipped) alleviated these issues a great deal for PvE; however, the long cast time still made Aimed Shot ill-advised for PvP. You can’t seriously expect to stand still for that long and remain safe.
Well, guess what? That line of thinking is out the window now, too. Aimed Shot is going instant cast, like Arcane Shot. The damage will be reduced slightly (to preserve balance) and it’s cooldown will remain unchanged.
I’m… well, baffled. I’m not sure what brought about this change, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. After all, they’re drastically changing a shot that I’ve worked with and had a functional understanding of for three years, and now all the research we’ve all done regarding the overall effectiveness/benefits/downfalls of this shot have been turned on their ear.
Scatter Shot Goes Survival
Scatter Shot has been evicted from the Marksmanship tree and has found a new home with the Survival hunters. It’s going to be an 11-point SV talent, in fact.
I can already tell the 20/41/0 hunters are going to be pissed. For my part, you all know I’ve got a soft spot for the Survival tree so this really strikes me more as good news than bad. It’s seemed to me lately that the Survival tree has been getting the shaft, (but I’ll be the first to admit I’m biased) so getting a boon like Scatter Shot is rather nice.
Of course, this will further support the “Survival is just for PvP” stigma that the tree has always battled, which bothers me a bit. I’m hoping that’s not the direction this change was intended to take the tree in.
Readiness Goes Marksman
Apparently MM and SV have an exchange student program going on that we weren’t informed about. Readiness is making the move from the 41-point Survival talent to a 21-point Marksmanship talent.
Giving up Readiness was probably the hardest part of swapping to a hybrid build in the Beta for me. With my talent preferences leaning heavily toward an MM/SV hybrid these days, this change is more good news for me. Although, whether or not this remains “good news” has yet to be seen. For all we know, they could turn our talents upside down again and the next thing you know, this’ll end up in BM…
There’s some other shuffling around going on, but you can easily go read the source thread for that. I just really wanted to touch on these major changes coming to us, because… well, it totally just up-ended everything we thought we knew.
hey there, this is my first post on your blog that i read for some time with great pleasure.
just one thing to comment:
aimed shot = a shot that IT IS aimed, casted..
like when you aim at a target and really stretch that bow for a couple of seconds to increase the shot damage and speed.
well, i dont get it. aimed is instant? thats a contradiction in terms.
they should increase the damage, keep the casting time and cooldown and put the “dispel a magic effect” they nuttered arcane shot..
I’m very excited about these changes. Been looking forward to an MM/SV build with the expansion, and this all works well with what I’m looking to do.
Curious about the aimed shot though.. I thought they would give it the ability to turn into an instant shot after investing a few talent points into reducing the cast time, instead of nerfing the damage output. Granted, I’ve always liked the really big number that flies across the screen when I get an aimed shot off, but I think the lesser damage dealt with an instant shot will compensate nicely, over time. (Hopefully?)
Aimed shot is going find alot more use, like it did in the old days, even more really. PVE and PVP, its going to be a great boon.
In arena, this will give us some help against warriors. I’m not great at arena, but I will say this, when me and my healer go up against a warrior and his healer, we get the short end of the stick in terms of healing efficiency. Now we will be toe to toe! We still may get pwnd, but at least now it won’t be due to getting drained way faster than the other guy.
Ihloss last blog post..Turtle Testing – Part 2
@dani
The changed to aimed shot has taken a spell that was previously useless to us (and yet every hunter had to take it for mortal shots), and has now made it both optional as far as talents go and useful, and you’re complaining? “Aimed” doesn’t necessarily mean “stand around for 10 seconds looking through a scope like a sedated orc” (no offense, orc hunter mains!), it just means more precisely targeted at a specific body part than other shots.
And by the way, tranquilizing shot dispels magic effects like arcane shot used to.
In a way, I’m glad that I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my kal’dorei huntress will be doing in the expansion — news like this might have made my head spin around.
That said, I think that I like the changes to Aimed Shot. It’s once again a viable shot to use in a rotation, it provides us greater flexibility in PvP (I hated trying to get Aimed Shot off in Arena fights and almost entirely disregarded it in 2v2 matches), and it’s great to use again. Hopefully. Maybe?
As I said when I posted this on the TK forums, Lass:
“Somebody better satisfy their munchies and come down off their trip and take a second look at what they proposed… ”
Wow just wow, but then again, I fear change
Skar and Co.
If you fear change, it is only because change, for hunter’s, has so often brought bad things.
Cheer up though, while they may not get it right, you have to admit they are trying harder and with more result than ever before!
Ihloss last blog post..Turtle Testing – Part 2
@dani –
Seriously? For one ‘Aimed Shot” did not give a hunter any better chance to hit the intended target beyond the hunters hit rating. And, secondly, Aimed Shot as an instant cast allows for the Mortal Strike debuff to actually be applied in a PvP setting much more effectively. Why would any hunter in their right mind QQ over the lose of a 3 sec cast timer?
think ill level my druid first n let you do the math on the leveling/raiding builds before i even think about it this time…
Laziness ftw : P
Everything will end up changing again Lass, you know its true lol
Hi there, long time ready first time posting.
Here’s my take on the changes:
Aimed Shot being instant: Kinda weird, but i believe this change was more PvP oriented, so i see this change as a good change.
Arcane Shot: IM GLAD they removed the dispelling aspect of this shot and put it in tranq shot instead. Why? We are able to put more dps, again in DPS, without worrying about setting off a HoT/effect that goes off when dispelled. Nothing but good here.
Readiness: I have always been a Marks/Survival build so this ability along with Scattershot, is awesome. I haven’t quite mastered when to use readiness at the moment, but so far, from the arenas/bgs ive done, AWESOME.
I m kinda eager to see how many hunters switch from BM to Marks/Surv spec, ive always maintained my Marks/Surv build, even when ridiculed about my variation of it. Check me out im Keldorei-Lightbringer Server-Centered Guild
Lock and Loaded: Simply awesome, put down a mage ( they are beasts now by the way ) last night when this popped for me. A quick trick when doing BGs: Dot everything you see with Serpent Sting, it highers you chances of it procing lol, as with the build i went with only allows me one point into it:)
Chimera Shot: I find it lackluster and never would spec into it, please give me more info as i dont think its worth it going all the way down, giving up: Lock and Loaded/Killer Instinct/Reflexes all more than make up for that one mediocre talent. When we are 80 of course lol.