Hunters' nerf coming

Beware hunters! Nerfs are coming – and most other classes will no doubt toss their hats in the air in celebration. Hunters have been stealing the DPS Mantle from mages, locks and rogues in a mighty big way since Lich King launched.

This is just a heads-up post for you as I’ve yet to fully digest the info.

There is little doubt that BM hunters in particular have been doing some insane damage. Eyes have bulged as the dps meters have been spinning themselves into a frenzy in the raids and instances.

Now, it seems, the party is over. The following proclamation has emerged from the Blizz development team yesterday:

“Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE. We tested this a lot internally in beta and knew hunters were high but we hoped other classes would be able to catch up in a way they have as yet been unable to do.”

Now a whole raft of changes are being rolled out in the test realms. These include:

1: Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).

2: Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.

On top of that a number of changes are proposed that winds in some of the high damage pets are doing, again in particular through the BM spec.

Is there any solace. Well, yes there is. We MM hunters will be hit hard by the steady shot nerf and followers will know that I’ve not been impressed with the aggro problems we’ve had to cope with. So there’s half a cheer for the following:

1: Growl— threat generation increased by 20%

2: Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing).

Well at least that means my pet should hold aggro longer and when he does drop it I have a better ‘run away’ option to resume firing.

You can read more here: Bluepost