A new blog post from Ghostcrawler lays out projected stat changes for Mists of Pandaria. What does it have to say regarding hunters?
- Spell resistance is going away entirely. That means no Aspect of the Wild (in its current form as a resist buff at least), no more gemming spell penetration for PVP, no more stacking resists for extreme soloing.
- Hit is being shifted around a bit. To not have a miss roll on a boss we’ll need 7.5% hit.
- The big news, though, is this: “Ranged attacks will be able to be dodged. Hunters will benefit from expertise and will have it on their gear, which will also allow hunters and Enhancement shaman to share gear more easily.” To strike a boss from behind without ever being dodged, we’ll need 7.5% Expertise to avoid dodges in addition to the 7.5% hit needed to not miss it. This suggests a couple things:
- The post is vague on whether shots will be able to be parried or blocked. Hunters may, like melee currently, have an interest in being behind the boss because an additional 7.5% expertise could be needed to not be parried while in front of the boss (and 7.5% yet more to not be blocked (?)). This would really suck given our wider turning radius. However, it seems more likely that shots will just not be on the parry and block tables.
- Gone will be the days of weird class disparities resulting from differing needs for spell pen, expertise, hit and so on. Since (1) spell hit is going away and (2) hit and expertise are being equalized to require the same amount of rating for a 1% gain, this means that a caster needing 15% hit (which they will for bosses) will be roughly the same in itemization costs as a hunter or melee needing 7.5% hit plus 7.5% expertise.
- “All spells and abilities will crit for double damage, baseline.” Hopefully this will put an end to the weirdness of having some hunter abilities follow a 1.5x crit modifier and others follow a 2x modifier.
- PVP gear will be a lower item level than same-tier PVE gear in MoP. Combine this with the other rather massive shifts in PVP stats (which you should just read the blog post to get a handle on) and we will likely see a rather abrupt end to the strategic use of PVP gear in PVE and vice versa.
[Edit: Cleared up some of the wording about parry.]
I really, really hope they don’t go through with this. My only hope is that ranged attacks can only be dodged, thus allowing us to avoid a positional requirement. If that’s not the case my only conclusion is that Ghostcrawler is hitting the crack pipe more heavily than usual. Forcing us to essentially be melee in service of making better itemized gear for Shamans, would be a monumental blunder.
“Ranged attacks will be able to be dodged. Hunters will benefit from expertise and will have it on their gear, which will also allow hunters and Enhancement shaman to share gear more easily.”
“Against a +3/boss level creature: 15% spell miss, 7.5% melee miss, 7.5% dodge, 7.5% parry (from the front only), 7.5% block (from the front only).”
(Note: I am 90% sure that currently block and parry require the same amount of expertise to be taken of the table for the melee classes).
! In MoP ranged attacks are not parried, they can be dodged (dodge is not constrained by positional requirments).
In Cata hunters ranged attacks CAN BE BLOCKED! We are already the only ranged class with the requirement of wanting to “be the only ranged that wants to be behind the boss at all times.” No new handicaps for hunters, just the really annoying one is going away.
In my raid last night I had 1 arcane shot blocked by Hagara and 1 auto shot blocked on Ultraxion trash. (Logs url below). We have been dealing with blocks this whole expansion.
worldoflogs.com/reports/cfz11h9rwjy51wcb/details/10/
Barfolomew; umm BiS set-up sims (simulationcraft) for current tier have been using an agi ring with expertise. Try getting that ring over your rogues and enh shammies. Opening up expertise to hunters is probably a good thing for the game itemization as a whole as it will stop situations like this ring and allows a more balanced stat spread for all classes as Eidotrope noted. I don’t really see an issue with the proposed changes, other than a slightly more complicated reforging scheme to cap hit and expertise.
I’ve cleared up some of the wording in the post. My speculation looked too much like assertion.
Pardon my knee-jerk reaction to eidotrope’s post. Upon more careful inspection I realized ranged attacks can only be dodged. Poor reading comprehension ftl.
They said hunter shots could be dodged, not parried. I wouldn’t worry about having to be behind the boss.
The post mentioned ranged shot dodges and said nothing about ranged shot parries. I’m willing to guess that’ll mean that shots will be off the parry table, but they don’t say for sure.
Err yeah, that’s pretty much what I said too.
Shots will definitely not be on the parry table. If they were they would have said so.
You could make the same argument that if they weren’t they would have said so. They left it vague. I agree that they probably won’t be on the parry table, though.
‘Hunters will benefit from expertise and will have it on their gear, which will also allow hunters and Enhancement shaman to share gear more easily.”
On what planet??