We know that developers attempt to balance around all sorts of mathematical factors like itemization, target hit points, burst vs. sustained dps, etc. However, they evaluate non-mathematical factors as well. This post discusses how developers balance around hunter class identity.
We know from a blue post on Freezing Traps that developers employ their beliefs about who hunters should be as constraints upon what hunters are allowed to be. Ignore the bit about how the blue poster does not know the actual name of our trap.
We want Freeze Trap to be a trap. We actually tried a frost shot in the beta for Wrath of the Lich King, but it just diminished the trap vibe. It wasn’t a hunter trap anymore, it was simply a freeze. We understand that traps have some inherent limitations but ultimately we want to make them cool, rather than just cutting the concept and letting hunters do everything with shots.
Here a Blizzard representative is saying that a fix that caused a hunter ability to be be more functional was scrapped because it made the ability less `huntery.’ We should not claim to have identified a complete developer strategy from this single blue bost but we can make reasonable, cautious inferences from it. The blue post suggests that developers want to satisfy their sense of a class before they implement a change to it. In other words, we can cautiously suppose that a balance change has to fit with the devs’ sense of a class’s identity before it can be patched in.
If hunter identity matters for what we can be, we should question what it is. The developers’ vision in this respect remains a permanently open question but we can make speculations based on what changed and what stayed the same in the class overhaul with the release of patch 4.0. Given the holistic and deep nature of the class changes we can reasonably guess that if Blizzard kept something, they probably thought it was `huntery’ enough to be worth keeping. If they got rid of it, they probably thought it was not essential to hunterness. Using this criteria we can reason that we hunters are wedded to our traps, our aspects and our pets; that we are supposed to deal elemental and physical damage; that we are a class that avoids damage rather than one that heals itself through it. Only our damage is magical; the rest of what we do is supposed to have some physical grounding (Disengage is a physical jump, Deterrence is spinning blades, etc.). We are not to be thought of like rangers in other games that are weak druids that shoot arrows; rather, we are a ranged physical dps class. Fixes that would move us out of these niches would probably be preempted by developers. It’s doubtful that we’ll ever see a petless MM tree or a truly powerful self-heal no matter how many times forum users request these things. We likely won’t ever get a freezing shot. Some such non-huntery changes would be nice and could go a long way toward balancing hunters (particularly for PVP). However, such changes likely won’t happen because they don’t fit Blizzard’s vision for who and what the class is supposed to be. Again, to be clear, this is speculation on my part.
All this does not mean that developers are above preserving or creating inconsistencies within classes. For example, Arcane Shot makes no sense in terms of hunter identity. Hunters don’t even use mana anymore, and when we did we had far more in common with shamans and druids than we did with mages. Indeed, arcane magic is often seen as antithetical to the elemental side of WoW that hunters partly reside in (think of the longtime ban that night elves had on practicing arcane magic). Giving hunters Arcane Shot is about as class-appropriate as giving warlocks “Bolt of Penitent Holy Love” or giving rogues a pet fire elemental. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice having an instant magic shot that ignores armor and is not subject to typical resist buffs; I’m just saying that Arcane damage is not remotely `huntery.’
Despite this oddity of mage damage in our rotations, Blizzard has done much to preserve pillars of hunter identity over time, even through the transition to Focus, suggesting that they will continue to do so in expansions to come. This means that whenever we see innovative and helpful but nevertheless non-huntery suggestions proposed in the forums and elsewhere, we can have some confidence that they’ll never happen. This is not merely because Blizzard’s default motivation is to preserve the status quo; it’s also because they’re deeply invested in preserving class distinctions and identities. In our feedback to Blizzard (be it through the official forums, beta testing, or some other avenue) we should strive to cater to this constraint on hunter class development, even if only because we do not want our suggestions to be rejected out of hand. We should offer suggestions that are functionally proper, yes, but also aesthetically `huntery.’
However, the burden of ideas does not rest solely or even mostly on us. Blizzard developers ultimately make the decisions. Returning to the blue post at the beginning of the post, it is curious that they cannot envision a CC system for us that is both not horribly clunky in pvp and class-appropriate. It amounts to a failure of imagination on their parts. And, unfortunately, such failures of imagination consign hunters to the lowest levels of representation in rated pvp. Our class identity then can be said to be both a blessing and a burden. When all is well, developer fidelity to class identity maintains the hunter as a fun and distinctive class. When there are problems with a pillar of hunter identity, such as traps, and no solutions are deemed class-appropriate, then developer adherence to aesthetics can actually preserve and entrench the problems. It engenders questions about how much class distinctiveness should be sacrificed for the sake of class functionality, and whether that tradeoff can be avoided with imaginative solutions.
Great post! Really, really interesting issue to think about and while I appreciate your efforts to keep your tone neutral, or even optimistic (from how I read this) I am struggling to see their comments on the freeze trap, for example, as something more than Hunters being essentially “punished” for being Hunters.
It’s a persistent deterrant to playing in any PvP setting as a Hunter, along with many other things, obviously (Minimum Range, anyone?) I’m primarily a raider so the PvP issue isn’t a deal breaker for me, yet, though I do remain hopeful for the state of Hunter’s viability in every facet of the game as Blizzard continues to patch an expand our universe.
It also goes without saying that some Hunters enjoy and do very well in PvP battles/matchups/etc. despite the drawbacks inherent to the class, so… maybe I just have a lot more to learn.
I think the only true handicap derived from Blizzard’s image of hunters is minimum range. Traps, pets, minimum range, and ranged physical damage are unique to hunters, give us our identity. Of those, only our minimum range hinders us. Traps are clunky but useful, pets are buggy but powerful. Minimum range is detrimental. Our job is dps, and when a target is inside our minimum range, we can’t dps it, we can’t do our jobs. Yet Blizzard doesn’t seem to care. Remove that and we become all-powerful. We had a glimpse of how awesome we could be when Kill Shot was “bugged” and could be fired at point-blank range. Twas sweetness. But because that didn’t fit into Blizzard’s idea of what a hunter is, because it wasn’t “hunter-y”, they removed it.
The strategy against all the other classes is so much more complex than the strategy against hunters. Versus a hunter, the strategy is simply to get in their minimum range. That’s it. Surely hunters would at least be on par with the other classes if we didn’t have this crippling mechanic.
Eliminate minimum range or increase hunter abilities to create range. I mostly PvP, but new to WoW, and I am sick to death of how rarely I get to create space between opponents compared to their range closing skills.
Between Druid/Warrior/Rogue charges, Mage blinks, and DK tentacle thingies, opponents are always closing with the hunter. The Hunter, in response, can either Disengage or the less effective Stun and Run which very easy to trinket out of.
I’d like to see Disengage get a 15-sec cool down or a focus cost with no cool down.
interestingly enough, i’ve been noticing more things where there isn’t a minimum range. it seems to be dependent on the target.
Blizzard has decreased the hitbox on a lot of mobs; the spiders that “web grip” you up the rocks in the Molten Front dailies come to mind. However, minimum range still rears its ugly head; thanks, Baleroc, and your stupid shard placement. Still, minimum range hurts us in PvP more than any other situation. They remove min range in PvP, we usher in a new era of dominance.
It’s an interesting problem to have, balancing and improving a weak class while still “coloring within its lines”, so to speak.
I have to imagine that the class designers at Blizzard have some kind of chalkboard or notebook or something with a list of what each class is based on.
Paladin: holy crusader; can use a shield or swing a hammer; delivers justice in the name of the holy light, whether you like it or not. Captain america. Got it.
Rogue: sneaky trickster; stabs your back; poisons you; one second everything’s normal, the next you’re lying on the floor with your kidney on the ground beside you. Ninja assassin. Got it.
So what’s a hunter?
Here are what I see as the prototypes for the hunter class, and what they’re all about:
1. Hunting in the woods; it’s like shooting a critter; either you hit your prey and it dies, or you miss and it goes running off. No need for any defense there.
2. An archer; in an army you’re never in melee range. you’re there to shoot the enemy from long range as it approaches. You have your infantry there to keep your targets away from you.
3. A trapper; you use your traps offensively. You rarely even see your prey, and they don’t know about the trap until they stumble across it. You are often living off the land (“surviving”) in other ways too.
4. A sniper; you’re never seen. You’re basically hunting, but against people. You always get the opener, and there’s never any opportunity for melee counterattacks due to the extreme range. Of course, this is the realm of one-shot kills, and the hunted aren’t even aware they’re being targeted until it’s too late.
5. Animal Tamer; in warfare (aside from the obvious mounts) your animals are usually used to track and disable targets, not to kill (although historically, they occasionally would kill lightly armored targets).
Thinking about these prototypes, a hunter’s class identity should be:
1. We always get the opener. If the opportunity isn’t perfect, we are patient enough to wait until it is.
2. We have longer range than anyone.
3. Prey caught in our trap is nearly a sure kill. Rarely, it will escape the trap.
4. In hand-to-hand combat, we are woefully weak. Our only hope is to escape.
5. Our tamed beasts are capable of tracking you down and disabling or at least distracting you. If you’re weak or the beast is strong, it might kill you.
6. We have keen eyesight. We know where our targets are before they know we’re watching.
These are just a few of the very general traits of a hunter. Blizzard is right on with most of these things, but misses the mark on others (and rightfully so in some cases, like one-shot kills). Here are my suggestions for a few basic opportunities for improvement that maintain or even enhance the hunter class identity:
BM: More threatening beasts. Getting mauled by a dinosaur should be pretty distracting and intimidating, and should command a lot of the target’s attention. Especially when it’s pissed.
MM: Longer range. Come on, a seasoned marksman can’t hit a mark beyond 40 yards?
SV: Powerful traps. Like, powerful enough to cause concern for a whole fleet of spaceships with squids inside. (Sorry, I went there.)
So that’s what I think.
One of the most committed posts I have read. I think trying to be fair to the noticeably silent blues.
An interesting post. Sadly it goes to show that whatever their philosophy Blizzard don’t seem to be capable of delivering in practice.
Take traps, your example. Pre Cat it they worked OK for PVE and had one major issue for PVP, (being resisted regardless of hit/spell pen)..
For Cat Blizzard chose to spend no time/effort on fixing the major issue. Instead they wasted it on delivering a trap launcher that, while nice in theory, is clunky and bugged. (as noted latest podcast it now switches off autoshot ffs)
As for the resistance bug.. well basically they lied and claimed it was impossible to fix. Then they fixed it without too much effort.
Take pets. Of all things these should be the defining feature of hunters. However many other specs now have them and what’s more they are every bit as powerful, in PVP often more so.. Locks have fel hunters, with 2 useful abilities, heal the player, do big damage and have an instant revive. Mages have elementals ofc plus mirror image giving them up to 4 “pets” at once. And there are DKs pets too.
Take self healing. Why is it part of hunter identity to have no effective self healing? OK we can heal our pets which helps when soloing but is useless against other players. If we go BM and we spend a lot of time and effort we get a pet that can heal us. Great. Other pure DPS classes get self heals (and dispels) that are way better and free.
Take hunter identity in PVP. Blizzard simply don’t have a clue here. PVP abilities are spread across specs so that all have few but none is especially suited. Intimidation is a classic example. In WOTLK BM was worst DPS spec by a mile. So what does it get in Cat? A special ability that is only useful for PVP. This seems to be a sign that Blizzard see it as a PVP spec and it is OK for that now. But its only OK. And it still sucks at PVE DPS. MM remains best PVP spec, and best PVE (when not AOEing), which in itself is another fail in terms of hunter identity.
I started playing mid WOTLK so Cataclysm is my first experience of an expansion. I have been hugely disappointed by it. Most of all by Blizzard’s inability to set articulate and follow design philosophies like your example.
Their vision should not be a mystery. It should be stated load and clear so we can choose a class to play on the basis of it and they can design in accordance with it.
I simply don’t see this. All I see is muddle and mess.
With Spirit Bond and Chimera Shot the way they are, MM has the strongest survivability, which doesn’t make sense, at least to me.
With Spirit Bond where it is, notionally all specs can take it, but, in PvE at least, only BM Hunter’s will take it. I don’t suppose many PvP SV or MM Hunters take it. Thematically, it fits the tree, but it really is lackluster.
MM has the real self heal, of course, but since it’s tied to a powerful ability, I don’t suppose it could be boosted very much. Really, it just seems to me like a leftover from when Chimera Shots effect depended on the sting that was on the target. I wouldn’t miss it if it was scrapped.
SV is the one spec without any self heals or damage mitigation. I won’t say that SV has lost it’s flavor as a spec, because if you consider it’s main traits to be improved traps and stings, then it certainly has that in spades. It’s just that Survival should have some sort of self heal or damage mitigation outside of the availability of Spirit Bond.
I’ve had the idea before of instant cast bandages applying an equivalent HoT. It would be a completely non-magical themed ability perfectly fitting the SV motif, while staying somewhat balanced to all the other classes. Of course, the real advantage to it would be maintaining DPS while self healing.
The problem with lack of self heals is primarily in PVP. And it just highlights how Blizzard have totally lost the plot regarding balance.
Hunter heals are useless compared to hybrid classes with a healing spec or tank health regen abilities. This may or may not at one stage be balanced by the so called “hybrid tax”. Whatever it is clear now that no tax such exists. Hybrid specs can DPS at an equivalent rate to pure DPS and so get a massive PVP advantage through self heals/dispels/damage mitigation.
Hunter heals are also useless compared to some DPS specs. This was always the case for locks. With Cataclysm however Blizzard showed just how they don’t seem to understand their game when they gave Rogues>> Recuperate.
Here is an ability hunters can only dream of. It gives constant healing. Base no talents 3% every 3 secs (Spirit Bond for cost of 2 talents gives 2% every 10 bleah..). Then with talents boost this to near 5% every 3 secs plus reduce all damage by 6% plus boost energy regen!!!! OK it costs combo points but so little that it’s possible to have it up near 100% of the time.
The implications of this on PVP should be obvious to anyone. But not apparently Blizzard. The justification for giving rogues this awesome ability was class balance of all things. Apparently rogues were felt to be difficult to level and this was the way to fix it. Completely frustrating. And whats more their base assumption was wrong. I have just leveled a rogue from 80>85 in 4 days. All recuperate means in leveling practice is that I don’t need to wait quite as long between pulls and use a few less potions/bandages.
still giggling over mental image conjured by the phrase “bolt of penitent holy love”…
Well written, and well thought out post. Thank you Eid for this interesting angle.
Great article. You hit a very important point there. IMHO, if any buff is non-huntery, it shouldn’t make it into the game.
Min range? Yes please. It’s a great mechanic and should stay. Of course we need tools to be very very slippery and mobile to counter lockouts. No class played by a bad-mediocre player should be able to lock down a skilled hunter.
Traps? Yes too. You can do great things with them. They need tweaks however. For instance, arming time should go away from the already obvious trap launcher (which needs a better mechanic too) and freezing trap shouldn’t break from the hunter’s own dots and pet damage.
Pets? Hell yes. Making differences in how important a pet is between the specs is adding depth to the game. But they should definetely stay part of the class.
Self heals? They’d fit perfectly with the SV spec, yet it’s the one that has no self heal at all. As well as cures which should be elemental to someone who specializes in “surviving in the wilderness”. That’s a point where I don’t agree at all with Bliz. That leads me to…
Elemental damage? AS is totally off as you mentioned. I don’t see why it made it up to today with the same name and similar effect since classic. ES has an odd feeling too, I don’t think it’s very huntery, but hell, that’s only my opinion. Poisons, diseases and up to an extent shadow damage (shadow hunter thing) fit very well. As I think of it, Fire damage would find a better niche in BM or MM than in SV. SV is totally based on that elemental damage thing, but for me, that’s rather odd.
ES is supposed to be explosives strapped onto an arrow that is shot into the target before exploding. Pretty brutal, but also physically-grounded, and therefore plausibly ‘huntery’ in my opinion.
Ok I didn’t think of that. It makes perfect sense then. Sounds fun. :)
I think also that abilities like Essence of the Viper tread the line between game mechanics and lore. The name fits with SV’s theme, but the mechanic boosts magic damage. That’s where we have to sort of separate mechanics from lore. On one level of awareness, we know that magic damage doesn’t necessarily mean magic user, while on a more conscious level, we can enjoy burninating all the things.
TROGGDOOOOOORRR \m/
Playing a hunter myself, I think Hunter traps should actually trap and hold someone. For something that looks suspiciously like a bear trap, it’s not doing the ankle damage it should be. We like our traps and if you stepped in it, you should be there for the duration be it fire, snakes, or both.
And none of that, I shot him therefore he is now free to close distance and beat my face in. No, that enemy player/NPC is there for the 8 seconds and then maybe he’d get out with a movement speed debuff that could last a few seconds longer. We could even make half of it trinket-able. You can either trinket to get out of the trap and take the debuff or take the trap and trinket the movement speed debuff.
Plus, the whole deadzone thing makes me wanna scream. If my Hunter is holding a gun, it doesn’t matter how close that Warrior’s face is. There should still be a hole in his face. Just saying. xD
the dead zone was removed long ago.
Some people are calling melee range the dead zone for Hunters. I don’t think many players remember the old dead zone between melee and range.
I know I must sound like a miserable old git. That’s because I am. But I didnt start this way, I started loving WOW but have got disillusioned about the providers, their competence and motivation.
Recent example. They can spend effort going into the fine detail of transmogrification rules. http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/198888/transmogrification-rules
If only they could spend similar effort into addressing the far more important questions raised by this post.