I’m not kidding when I say that the new misdirect is probably one of my favorite changes in patch 3.3. Every time a tank says “holy mackerel- I had 20k threat on that boss”, I smirk.
It’s a win win. For the cost of a GCD (the first one is free), you help keep your tank ahead of all the DPS and healers. Every threat reset, you can blast away for 4 seconds without hovering your finger over the feign death button. A couple of hunters in a 25 man are able to vault a tank so far ahead of the DPS in the first few seconds after a pull or threat reset that the overall DPS of the raid can be increased by a non-trivial amount. This is assuming your locks and mages are watching threat, and know about this change.
A perfect fight for this is on Marrowgar- right after he’s done bone-storming the raid, his threat resets just when the healers have the most work to do. Good tanks are irreplaceable, however MD can let even a bad tank keep agro during these first few seconds.
For those of you who are looking for the raw changes:
The good
- All hunters can MD simultaneously
- All the threat you generate on all targets in those 4 seconds goes to your tank
- They didn’t break any macros that I heard of
The bad
- The cooldown starts after your first threat transfer, not after you use the ability. I’m not complaining too loud, because while this is not the way it used to work, the new way is infinitely better despite this.
The ugly
- You don’t see the familiar misdirect aura over your target, you see it over yourself. I’m sure at least some of you feigned death the first time you noticed this visual change. I know I did :P. I also checked my big-brother addon to see who was messing with me. Blizzard, evidently.
- As a side effect, when you MD to your lock (with every intention of canceling it, I’m sure), he won’t see it unless he has a mod that announces these things.
Euripides
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
Shadowstreak
One side-effect of “the bad” – if you MD but hold it for the full 30 seconds, it goes on cooldown without ever having misdirected a thing.
I’ll still take this one over the last one though :)
I think that last point in “ugly” needs to be recategorized to “fantastic.” So much more fun to be had now!
Man, I’m gonna be in trouble if any guildies read this blog :\
I, too, thought I was in for some hurting when I first saw the MD aura appear on my toon. I didn’t FD because I had just hit the keystroke and I was the only Hunter in the group at the time, so I was pretty sure that it was a result of the change, but the blood pressure rose a bit nonetheless.
Raid Leader: And *how* did you have 20k threat Mr Rogue before the tank had the boss?? I’m sorry, but we have to let you go. Good day.
I wouldn’t start trouble with my rogues- they’re distressingly good at this game, and mostly officers to boot :)
They should rename Misdirect to Superglue.
At the beginning of a fight with AoE targets (phase 2 of HToC, blue squadrons in HVH, etc.), just one Volley after a Misdirect sends them straight to the tank.
Sounds like we should be expecting a nerf incoming…I too love the change, and hope we get to keep it :)
I don’t see why they’d nerf it considering it’s almost identical to the mechanics of the Rogue’s tricks of the trade.
It will probably be changed cus we make so much aggro it is lols. My tanks have had 3/4 MDs after every bone storm on marrow and before they have had a chance to taunt they have 40k threat it is crazy. I do love the change though it finally means I can let everything go and dps like a crazy fool with bad tanks.
God I love the new MD. The other raiding hunter in my guild and I have been freaking out about it since we got it.
Going all out at the start of the fight is the best thing ever. Unless I discover I misclicked the MD and pulled threat…Which has only happened a couple times…
But one thing I like about the old MD was that I could threaten clothies with it.
Mage: Dude, that spellpower staff is not hunter loot.
Me: OH YEAH?!
Mage: *misdirect appears over head*
Some people didn’t realize they could click it off. Hilarity ensued.
Agree, this is the best thing that has happened to hunters in 3.3, especially as I respeced to Marksman 2 weeks ago. :) )
Also, thanks to your article, now I understand why MD took way too long to CD during some fights … I didn’t know the “bad” part … Now I get what happened (MD too early before the fight, 30 secs gone, + 30 secs CD).
I’ll wait for the last moment to MD now. ;) Thanks !
The new misdirection changes are horrible if you are going multi-target threat on Heroic Anub.
For example you dps the boss, of course you leave serpent sting, and maybe even have piercing shots ticking on the boss.
In come the adds, you misdirect, try to position yourself to hit one add, and your dot damage immediately procs misdirection. So you literally have no time to wait.
The same applies if you try to do what rogues do, misdirection, immediately initiated by dots, volley, the first tick of volley may or may not go off before misdirection comes off.
Either way since this new change, add agro on this fight in particular has been very flaky.
This is one small situation where it’s less good, but all you lose is DoT damage on the boss and one GCD because you can’t preemptively MD, whereas on many other fights, you gain so much more.
“Di…did that arms warrior just have 20k dps right at the start of the fight…what, is he taunting?”
“L2P arms”
“noob”
“I swear, I didn’t do anything”
“Euripides was right, arms warriors ftl”
:D
You owe me a new keyboard. Coffee… everywhere…