Tentative Hunter Changes in 3.3!
October 1, 2009The patch 3.3 test realm notes were released today. Of interest:
Hunter
Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
Beast Mastery
Intimidation: If the hunter’s pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet’s next swing or attack.
Pets
Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Jurgwena’s gonna be pissed about that last one. Avoidance is a fairly important part of PvP survivability, and there is no counter balance to make this less of a nerf.
For PvE, however, this is nice. The avoidance change is a nice bonus compared to what it is now, and the misdirection change is just pure win. No more complex charges and rotations, just throw it up every cooldown and continue to blast away. Excellent.
euripidesoutdps
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
I disagree on the MD change. It doesn’t change how we MD during a fight (fire, fire, MD, fire, fire, etc), but it will make pulls much trickier. Sometimes it takes 4 seconds to MD, run into range of the boss, and hit the boss (shot travel time). And we can’t prep for adds; MD’ing Anub adds is gonna suck.
I don’t understand this change. MD is a great ability as it is. All this just so a target can get simultaneous MDs? Fail.
The Avoidance change is nice for PvE. I wonder if 2/3 Avoidance will keep pets alive.
Agreed – pulls and mid-fight MDs will be harder with only a 4sec window. The only good thing I can see is that things like Explosive will work with MD.
Avoidance – definitely a nerf for PvP. The only fight I EVER have problems with in PvE is Mimiron, so I don’t think it’s worth the change, unless Blizz are designing fights in Icecrown with a lot of AoE.
Well, if you read the ability closely, you’ll see that it says the four-second timer doesn’t start until you fire a threat-generating attack. So, it’s still basically the same deal =P
I reckon having a “tricks of the trade” type of ability where a full 15 seconds of dps agro transferred to the target will be a better modification than a hunter’s 3.3 verison of MD.
including a 1.5sec GCD, you are looking at approx 3 shots invoking the global cool down and about 2 auto shots supposing a 2 sec ranged weap speed.
that’s what I reckon anywayz
The avoidance change is a disaster for pvp, I’m really stunned that Blizzard would even consider it.
The misdirect change sounds like a positive change to me because like Pike said nothing happens UNTIL you start firing. Plus now we all can simultaneously put up MDs. Jurgwena I definitely can see how the avoidance change would hurt in certain situations but how often do you and your pet hang out under a rain of fire/blizzard/FoK cloud. You pet usually has as much health and armor as you, now with survivability cooldowns and mend pet your pet shouldnt just die off from random splash or AoE. I can see how in a BG you could get messed up running into a cloud of multiple AoEs but it sounds sort of unlikely
MD never seemed to work very well with Volley (in my opinion). With this change I imagine we’ll be asked to, say, MD+Volley for tanks trying to hold agro for aoe (on whelps for example). I also hope the MD change will help with the fact that even Volleying in Viper can pull mobs off a pet’s Thunderstomp agro.
But otherwise, yeah, I’m going to miss the old MD for pulling.