An Urgent Message for Blues, ZC in Particular

In the last Hunter update you were widely praised and made the vast majority of players happy with the Class and thankful that you were taking such good care of us.

In the discussion that you started about your planned changes to the Class for RoI many people were not happy with your initial ideas, but were happy that you were throwing them out there for us to see. In your subsequent post in the topic you said you were listening to the complaints and would change some of your proposals that were not received so well by the community. Again, this made people happy that you were at least talking to us.

As I understand it, that was your last post. There has apparently been not one post by ZC in the Hunter section of the beta forums, and I certainly don't remember seeing any here. According to the Dev Tracker, ZC last posted (aside from a funny comment in General Discussion) in the RK thread about Desired Changes (itself a worrisome thread, given that "Desired Changes" has a substantially different meaning to the Hunter thread - "Upcoming Changes") in early June.

Now, with the NDA being lifted, we are getting information that is having the reverse effect of your last update - instead of being praised, these changes are being met with confusion, disappointment, anger and the feeling that Hunters are being relegated to third-class citizens in their primary role.

You gave us something great the last time, now you're taking most of that away. What was the point? What was the reasoning? What is the point of a beta test if the testers are going to be ignored? Why are you silent?. I realise that things may change and the information we have so far received is not necessarily how the final live build will be, but right now we get the impression that that will be exactly what will be released. The less communication we have, the angrier people are getting.

We need some communication. We need answers. Since there was apparently no communication at all, up to this point, in the beta forums we need to know what is going on and whether the reports coming in from beta players are accurate, and will be in the live build. We need to hear from any Blue, but ZC in particular.

Well put, +rep.

I think the majority of hunters are VERY happy about the current state of their class. The changes to the class from the beginning of the year were great. Players were happy, the class is powerful, but not OP, players enjoy both the red and the blue line and there's a lot of discussion about the optimal build and different playstyles.

The changes ZC proposed and commented on before in this thread caused a lot of discussion, but the coments taken as a whole are quite constructive.

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Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

First off, to the "but we just got updated!" people. Rumblings in other class forums may have begun to tip you off that more then just the Hunter is getting some work. We haven't made global announcements yet, but I think it may be fairly clear where this is going. Also, it will be some months before anything I've teased here hits game.

Next, I want to give a big thankyou to the whole Hunter community here. The debate and discussion has been very helpful! I very much wanted to just throw some chum in the water and see what happened. While I didn't know exactly what to expect, I'm glad for what I did get.

[snip]

I think that's the important stuff. I'm going to be out for two weeks after this, so don't expect any more info any time soon. Please do continue discussing things, talking about what you want and don't want, and focus on examples, not hyperbole :)

GL, HF!

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This is the last thing I saw ZC writing in our forums - on May 12th! There is no sign ZC read the rest of the discussion which dried after about 26 pages. I was impressed that there seemed a to be real interest in the playerbase's feedback in the beginning, but now I am even more disappointed about the behaviour of the developers in charge. Two weeks off? It feels more like 3 months in retrospect. Isn't it disgusting that there wasn't any communication with the playerbase at all?

After ZC's very own thread I was confident that the devs had a good grasp of both the class and the wishes of the players. Nobody expected another complete overhaul, especially for the worse. Now nearly everyone seems to cross his fingers for the changes currently on beta not to be the same when RoI goes live.

After the beautiful changes to the class in spring and the very well-designed raid I thought buying the expansion would be a no-brainer. I even considered gifting one to my wife to get her playing the game again. But at the moment I am more than happy that I didn't preorder it... and as it stands now, I will neither buy the x-pac nor will I prolong my subscription after my current one expires.

English is not my first language, but I hope you'll get my thoughts.

I'm assuming that, as I've said in another place, Other People are Smart Too.™

If we see how wretched and clunky the changes are, I'd imagine They do too. There has been more than ample feedback that this situation, as we say in my newly adopted home, just ain't right, bless its heart.

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Originally Posted by spiralsatori

I'm assuming that, as I've said in another place, Other People are Smart Too.™

If we see how wretched and clunky the changes are, I'd imagine They do too. There has been more than ample feedback that this situation, as we say in my newly adopted home, just ain't right, bless its heart.

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Overall I agree with you. Back in SoM there were some horrible problems in beta with Hunter combat/animation, and after a lot of vocal feedback from the hunter community, everything got fixed. In the past, they tend to correct class problems in beta more-so than instances/quests. The major difference, and what the OP is really worried about, is that there has been zero communication for the Dev we all believe is spearheading the changes to our class since MAY 12th. In SoM beta, Devs were fairly involved with the forums, and even made comments to the point of: we know there are problems, look for fixes in the next build. And Lo, there were changes, and they were good. Even if ZC posted 1 sentence: "We hear you, expect changes in the next build." A lot of anxiety would be alleviated. Communication has never Turbine's strong point, but I can only hope it's because they are so busy fixing things they don't have time to get on the forums and post.

There's a big difference between lack of communication and the complete ignorance of the communities satisfaction with the last hunter update by completely reworking the hunter class AGAIN for RoI. I just don't get it... we were actually pretty happy, boards were active, people were playing hunter alot... again... so they decide to put a ton of man hours into redoing everything they just put a ton of man hours into redoing.... if they are that flush with cash/manpower why aren't they fixing #### that's been broken for ages instead of making stuff worse? :p

Hunters have *NEVER* had good communication from our devs. It is sad but true. 2 years ago we had a similar thread to this one. Begging and pleading for someone to reply to our concerns. That thread was spawned by a 4-6 month long silence and it took a long time before ever getting a response.

Those of us who have been around for awhile have gotten used to the fact that the devs do not care about providing feedback to the Hunter community, you just have to learn to deal with it.

The disconcerting thing to me was mentioned earlier, there has also been absolutely zero feedback in the beta forums. In all of the previous betas the devs were at least semi active on those boards. In this beta there has been absolutely NOTHING from the devs. Dark times are rising in the east....

im praying that the bad stuff theyve talked about is just a cruel trick and what we need to do is to post something in this thread every day so it will stay at or near the top of hunters forum page

Is there any other way we can contact the Blues then?

I fear even this post will not get any responses, and the hunter will essentially be (totally) ruined if these changes goes live.

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Originally Posted by Erasmus354

Hunters have *NEVER* had good communication from our devs. It is sad but true. 2 years ago we had a similar thread to this one. Begging and pleading for someone to reply to our concerns. That thread was spawned by a 4-6 month long silence and it took a long time before ever getting a response.

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Kinda silly to say that it's /just/ hunters. I think burg...is much....much...much worse off.

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Originally Posted by Starrywisdom

Kinda silly to say that it's /just/ hunters. I think burg...is much....much...much worse off.

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Burgs are better and even if their dev is terrible on communication, he made changes that made ppl happy, so no one (or very few) is complaining anyway. It's kinda more like every class that Orion does not have lead dev position on anyway with ZC being a little worse this time around.

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Originally Posted by Starrywisdom

Kinda silly to say that it's /just/ hunters. I think burg...is much....much...much worse off.

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Burgs only have slightly better Dev communication than Hunters, but that's still better than Hunters so you're wrong.

And Burgs are getting a serious buff to their dps capabilities, leading me to believe that they will fill more of a dps/debuff role. Instead of their current support role. So it doesn't really matter if the Dev communication is bad for burgs, all the burgs I know and talk to are extremely happy with the changes and aren't too worried with the encroaching LMs on their niche.

Hunters and a few other classes arent the only ones being ignored. Turbine has been ignoreing most very important forum posts. One in perticular is the stuff about ROI purchaseing in the LOTRO store and other stuff like its cost (and if it will be in parts), that will cost people money or will cause them no end of problems if they make the wrong choice. Turbine is a pretty good company but listening to the important things is something they need to work on and should work on if they want their players to be more in touch with them.

As for the hunter changes, i am a little scared about this whole new dirrection of the changes that revamps all the hard work they just did that 95% of hunters love and thank turbine for. We just want a little conformation on a topic or 2 so we can stop worrying and asking you about every other problem.

Over all we need to trust turbine that they will do the right thing. They should tell us in turn a thing or 2 of what they are planning to do so we can give them a hint or 2 on what we like and dislike. And they only need to post a sentence or 3 so as i said before can stop worrying and trust them.

"A good compromise leaves everyone unhappy" From Eragon book series. :) If we get to work along i think we will find LOTRO will rise up to the level it can be at.

I hope this post reflects on some wisdom that the stuff of turbine and the players of LOTRO can use so we all get along.

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Originally Posted by PiggyManHero

Burgs only have slightly better Dev communication than Hunters, but that's still better than Hunters so you're wrong.

And Burgs are getting a serious buff to their dps capabilities, leading me to believe that they will fill more of a dps/debuff role. Instead of their current support role. So it doesn't really matter if the Dev communication is bad for burgs, all the burgs I know and talk to are extremely happy with the changes and aren't too worried with the encroaching LMs on their niche.

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Originally Posted by Eldrandir

Burgs are better and even if their dev is terrible on communication, he made changes that made ppl happy, so no one (or very few) is complaining anyway. It's kinda more like every class that Orion does not have lead dev position on anyway with ZC being a little worse this time around.

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You guys keep talking about all these happy burgs and yet this forum [ http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?5-Burglars ] says the exact opposite?

Regardless stating that /only/ hunters are being ignored is incorrect.

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Originally Posted by Starrywisdom

You guys keep talking about all these happy burgs and yet this forum [ http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?5-Burglars ] says the exact opposite?

Regardless stating that /only/ hunters are being ignored is incorrect.

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They sure do look happy to me....

I know -I- am about my burg. Instant +30-40% melee offense? Hell yeah I'm happy about the changes. We're gonna have to worry about burgs out dpsing us too you know.

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Originally Posted by Starrywisdom

You guys keep talking about all these happy burgs and yet this forum [ http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?5-Burglars ] says the exact opposite?

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So I have a choice between believing a forum of some unhappy burgs, or several glffs of very happy burgs? I am going with the glff. Not only that, but when I went to your link I found over 6 pages of very happy burgs excitedly talking about their dps increase. Almost all the negativity I found on the threads I looked at was from you.

Guards feel pretty ignored too.

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Originally Posted by Malephor

Guards feel pretty ignored too.

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Its cause they're unkillable atm. Notice all the PvP guardians lately? mmmhhmmm

Getting back on track please...

I am sure that there are other classes that feel neglected as well. We all have out pet peeves and it is frustrating when we feel we are not listened to at all.

Now this post is a message to the Blues regarding the Hunter (and feel free to make a similar post in the other class threads if you like), and how we have not heard anything since May 12th, and even that message was shot, uncommitted and frankly vague.

Compared to some class developers who had a back and forth communication with their players, who wrote status reports about the development and asked for input, and who responded to them. (Like the LM pet changing from a cow to a limraf... go Belegwe! (grr in ruining the fun with laughing at the cow, though)). Compared to that great communication and co-work, of course we feel let down. Of course we, (and everyone else) wants the same level of commitment.

So this post is an outcry to the Blues that our feeling of lack of love goes beyond this and that personal pet peeve, but on the hunter community at large.

An class update will of course have some ups and some downs, but it is important for the health of the community that we end up on the plus side when adding the elements up.

Especially in an expansion we need to feel valued and excited about that is coming.

With RoI - we do not.

Of the five (66-75) new skills we got, it seems that three of them will outright make our classes *poorer* for choosing them, and the last two has no real change at all.

Even with our focus burn playstyle we barely keep up with the (easy) dps playstyle of the champ, runekeeper and OP guardian. With that possibility gone, we have lost one of our key roles in any groups.

The desire to move us away from this role I am sure is fueled by a wish to have us try out other roles and combinations, but unfortunately by blocking the really only viable role we had in a group (excluding our CC role) this will not have the desired effect.

By taking the sustained dps role away from us, we are left with no real role in a group. We have been lowered to a support class, and a poor one at that.

The changes coming with RoI is very far from what the hunter community want, and it is even further from what is needed to make us have a clear role in a group and to give the group a desire to add a hunter.

Left with an red trait line which because of the higher focus cost, will no longer be a valueable dps trait line,
and with a yellow, CC line, which is good, but of course no where as good as the LM and burglar,
and an undefined blue trait line which takes us nowhere really.
We are left with no specialization.

And when we hear nothing from the developers, given no heed to our concerns etc. we have making this post in hopes that the Blues will take notice and hopefully not dismiss this as a whine about a pet peeve project, but a concern about the community as a whole and a concern about the future role and value of the hunter class.

After all, we just want to play our preferred class and have fun doing so. We wish to feel that we have a role in the wonderful world of Middle-Earth and we wish to feel that we contribute to the fun when we play with our friends.

So please take heed to our concerns and thank you for reading.

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

....and when we hear nothing from the developers, given no heed to our concerns etc. ....... but a concern about the community as a whole and a concern about the future role and value of the hunter class.....

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Well written!!!
As I, like others, have been around since early Beta (and thus have some experience with developers and their "love" for the hunter), I personally see the situation as follows:
Developers have no real idea what the role and value of the Hunter in LOTRO is or should be.
The Hunter has been pushed around for years. He originally started as the single target DPS class, from then on, the role definition deteriorated and got blurred year after year, update after update. Hunters are said to be one of the easiest classes to be played, which might be true, but the persons behind the hunters, certainly developed a high degree of flexibility and situational adaptiveness!
Anyway, my best guess: Hunter changes will go through as they basically are (maybe one or the other little percentage change, but the structure won't change...yet).
A major shakeout of in-game hunters, and in 3-6 months, after the hot-fix season is through, one or the other developer, that feels bored, will have a look at this part of the forum and start working on one or the other hunter community issue that have been reported and raised months ago (in fact now).
The hunter role will still not be clearer defined, but be rather more blurry and undigested, but at least the hunter community will be satisfied with the scraps from the developers tables ("didn't we listen to some of their grievances?!"), until we enter the next round with the next major content and level update in about 1 -1,5 years.
Get it, Hunters have been and always will be at the bottom of the food chain in regards to developers' apatite for defining a role and thus adequately equipping the class to fulfil that role.

I don't say "give up hope", all I say is, don't expect that the structure will change dramatically and that you'll be listened to until later, after RoI has some months on its back and resources are available again. When this date draws closer, we should have a well structured grievance list at hand (supported by numbers, as this is basically all they base their changes on), to make it for the sepcific developer, who was given some time to spend on the hunter, as easy and effective (and painless) as possible.

See you in Middle Earth

What I don't get is that Orion has time to write poems for the Wa(r)dens, and write multiple replies in the Minstrel threads, etc... but whoever's in charge of this class update won't even take the time to drop in and say "Your concerns are noted, and we're either acting or not acting on them, for this reason:". Not here, and not in the beta forum. It makes me confused. Sure, Other People Are Smart Too™ but there does come a point where a bone needs to be thrown. :p

Well, at least we are not going to be lone nerf victims, RK's complain as much as we are :/ Oh well - out of my three favourite characters at least my warden will be still enjoyable to play ;) And in couple of months (probably around winter festival) there will be another round of updates that'll fix things we'll be crying about loudest. Im still vexed though :(

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Originally Posted by Scotius

Well, at least we are not going to be lone nerf victims, RK's complain as much as we are :/ Oh well - out of my three favourite characters at least my warden will be still enjoyable to play ;) And in couple of months (probably around winter festival) there will be another round of updates that'll fix things we'll be crying about loudest. Im still vexed though :(

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Tell me about it :D

My main is hunter(dps), and alts warden(tank) plus runekeeper(healer).

they seem to be making our class too flexable its like they are trying to makes us be able to do any thing the problem is with doing that they cant makes us good in any area becouse that would make us op i think they should make it simple. 3 trait lines

one for high dmg (per hit) but not neccasarily higher dps and cc (not nerfed cc and dps though)

one for high dps and not for higher dmg (per hit) and cc (again not nerfing those area though)

and one for cc (by now u should ssee what im saying so im not gonna re type what ive previuosly said again)

and make each traitline adjust our skills to fit their appropiate area. doing this you could have three different jobs and make us good at them instead of tryng to make us dps, support, poor off off off tank, and any other little things u can think of

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Originally Posted by Scotius

Well, at least we are not going to be lone nerf victims, RK's complain as much as we are :/

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However, their fire upgrades put them higher then us on the dps scale, and although lightning is nerfed it is still very powerful in the Moors AND RKs can now clear all slow debuffs whenever they wish upon getting a special R8 chisel, so even though they are getting a few nerfs they are still a lot more powerful then beta hunters. Our one advantage over RKs has always been sustained dps and the new fire removes that. (Also, just to be ominous because I can) Burgs have gotten so many dps upgrades that they feel as long as a cappy or food or w/e is helping their power they can even out dps a champ. Not to sure about that, but out parsing a hunter will be easy. I suppose I should also add that RKs are comforting themselves by looking at us and thinking those poor huntards lol

(Last repentance is a partial joke, some of them are actually doing that but certainly not all or even a majority)

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Originally Posted by spiralsatori

What I don't get is that Orion has time to write poems for the Wa(r)dens

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Those are so awesome.

@ZC We can has poems too???
Perhaps the changes in the format of an epic ballad, since your an RK writing an epic should be no problem, you already wrote one for the ages.

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Originally Posted by Eldrandir

We can has poems too?

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A funny poem
You can not
Have because
You is rot

Maybe when
You is more better
You will get
A rhymey letter

Lay off Orion you guys :). He's a freshly baked daddy since last sunday. Probably was shell-shocked when he wrote in warden forum. (He's still had time to inform his players though...*hint hint* ZC!)

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Originally Posted by CWood

A funny poem
You can not
Have because
You is rot

Maybe when
You is more better
You will get
A rhymey letter

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Whatever you might think,
remember that the prose,
or mighty lines of poetry,
no matter what the topic is,
gives wardens secret bliss!
:cool:

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Originally Posted by Glorietta

W
r
o
n
g

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Don't ask me silly questions
I won't play silly games
I'm just a simple choo-choo train
And I'll always be the same

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Originally Posted by CWood

A funny poem
You can not
Have because
You is rot

Maybe when
You is more better
You will get
A rhymey letter

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Perhaps twas the Hunters,
Maybe even the Keepers
That caused his flight
For now our situation is very tight,
With burglar & champ encroaching on our rights
To the title, king of single target fights.

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Originally Posted by Eldrandir

Perhaps twas the Hunters,
Maybe even the Keepers
That caused his flight
For now our situation is very tight,
With burglar & champ encroaching on our rights
To the title, king of single target fights.

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Pretending the rock is an arrow,
escaping as fellows fall down,
wielding a blade, long and narrow
- These things may make classes
presume they can kill.
Eventually hunters
win "King of the Hill"!

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Originally Posted by Glorietta

P
e
w
-
p
E
w

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Very nice lol

Dev Diary is going through the "processes" right now. I urge you to sink your teeth into that when it appears!

In the last update, I came upon a class that could stand to receive significant buffs. I tried to make many "sometime" skills into things you were encouraged to use more often (Heartseeker, Burn Hot, Fleetness) and to give Trapper line more potency.

In RoT, Hunters no longer needed significant buffs (except to Trapper, more later on that.) The focus was more on adding variety to play, and throwing in a few fun skill upgrades. As with all betas, things that were too strong or too weak were changed. This process, coupled with our data showing Hunters sitting quite nicely on the dps charts, meant that RoI wasn't going to be the windfall of potency that the previous update was.

This does not mean that RoI isn't chock full of goodies. One thing I'm particularly excited about is the Stance changes. We've decided to decouple stances from role, allowing stances to be swaped more freely based on circumstances, as opposed to being dictated by traitline. The Trapper line is finally having it's damage penalty fully removed, and is being given a few new ways to debuff enemies. You're gaining a new focus building AOE skill: Split Shot. And one of the skill improvements is removing the cooldown from Penetrating shot!

That all said, RoI may be the most ambitious expansion we've ever built from a systems perspective. The changes to itemization and stats are going to have ripple effects throughout the whole game. Things I'm keeping an eye on moving forward:
Make the difference between Huntsman and Bowmaster more extreme.
Legacy pass.
AOE damage capabilities.

I'll be making a Q&A thread for over the weekend and try to keep tabs on it.

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Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

....lots of important words.......
I'll be making a Q&A thread for over the weekend and try to keep tabs on it.

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HI!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for the news about the Q&A thread and other things, but instead of more AoE can we just have even more extreme single target dps?

Will the Q&A thread be a poem?

Thanks for the update. A little nervous but interested to try out the new changes.

Can't wait for Q&A.

Thank you very much ZC :)

I belive this long waited response makes all hunters very happy again, at least i am :D

Hunter was a lovely class,
That used to DPS.
With Zombies new changes,
The result we can only guess.

Heh, I'm not.

1. Where have you been?

2. How do you justify nuking focus burn?

3. Or: why after all those awesome improvements to the flexibility of the class in the last update, which you justifiably congratulate yourself for, are you taking a bunch of flexibility away?

4. This is not a couple of *tweaks* as you seem to want to imply, so you should probably say something about why I'm supposed to think this is just awesomesauce even though it makes it impossible to play the way I want and, more generally, reduces flexibility rather than adds to it. To put it differently, adding skills and changing stances isn't all that attractive when you force people to play them a particular way.

5. Why are you making it harder for hunters to do sustainable dps? Since you aren't adding to peak dps relative to other classes (and perhaps significantly reducing it) what possible role do you envision for the class?

6. and for goodness' sake, if you want to change stances and traitlines, at least make them work together in a way that makes sense (+icpr in Trapper is ridonkulous, +parry on endurance? I guess you really had no idea what to do here because that obviously doesn't make sense). maybe, oh i dunno, put the icpr bonus on a traitline that people who consume a lot of power are likely to use.

7. After making all the skills usable in the last update, why are you going to render so many unusable in this one? *Scale* the barbed arrow bleed damage. I don't know how this is not part of the *to do* list in an update.

8. While we're at it--add more focus generation to ISB--that would make the unjustified and uncommented on obliteration of a *core* hunter trait--strong draw--a touch more palatable.

9. Thanks for doing whatever you did about the aftercast on IQS, that was lame, I'm glad you fixed it. I assume it was a placeholder while you figured out a better solution, but since there has been no communication it was hard to know.

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Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

AOE damage capabilities.

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This is what worries me....its a fundamental shift of the basic role of the class, which has always leaned more towards single-target ranged DPS with a side of CC. I dont want to see the class moved away from that and towards some ranged-Champion playstyle.

Adding in more AoE traits and abilities on, say, Trapper line would be one thing, because that'd just give the option to bolster your AoE capacity if you wanted. What I'm afraid of seeing is the base class being pushed towards more AoE skills, and losing some of our single-target, rapid-fire prowess in the process.

Dear Blues,

The last update was indeed great, and we did start using skills we rarely used previously.

But not to be snide... but this time is a fail. Somewhat complete even.

Saying that we are placed "good" on the dps ladder is completely non-committed. With no definition about what the Blues consider good, we cannot really respond to that.

Fact is that most hunters wish to be at the top when it comes to sustainable dps. Now we are 5th or 6th.
That might be just where you want us... but it is not what we want.

We do not really have any other role except being taxi. (But with instance join even that is worthless now)

These "improvements" have made it more or less required to go 5 blues, or fully yellow when there is no LM or Burg around. Any combination of the three paths will make to weak in all three paths and not a viable option.

The new AOE, split shot... well, *please* say you are aware that hunters hardly if ever use rain of arrows, rain of thorns (and now split shot) in groups. Most times at least one mob is CCed, and the new "amazing" Split shot is worthless. Even in solo we cannot use it without risking breaking out *own* CC like RoT, BA and that stun shot skill.
(until the times we have no one CCed of course). And with the damage Split Shot does, I am not sure I will even pick up the skill.

The new improved skills are *slower* than the normal ones. The after animation has severely reduced how often we can attack and thus dps.

And really? Parry bonus on Endurance? Really? What possibly use can we have for that? On a "never-use-in-melee" stance - we get a melee type bonus?

Please feel free to double the induction of penetrating shot, if we can keep our focus reduction skill.
Removing the induction - while making it SLOWER because of the after-animation effect. That is borderline insulting.

I know you Blues worked hard on these changes, as a system developer myself, I have been in a position having worked long and hard on something which is not received well. It is tough and depressing, I know. I appreciate the hard work.

But... (and alas there always is), there has been no communication with the hunter community in this. The hunter players in Palantir are too few to give a well founded picture of our desires and wants. We were very happy with the last update and we once more had a role in groups. (several roles even). But now those are swept away.

Sure, we will come up with other builds, but it is *not* what we want, not what we need, and even more important, not what the groups needs.

When one of the "best" improvements in RoI will be that snares improves from 50ish to 90ish damage... then there is something vitally wrong.

While I am sure the hunter dev. diary will be well written, many of us will not like what it says. Knowing we will be hit by the largest nerf hammer in Lotro's history is one thing. With the guide, it will be official.

This time we are not happy, and why should we be? We have been reduced to a poorly defined support class, 5 or 6th on the dps list and we have not heard a single word from a developer before ZCs post today in a long, long time.

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

We have been reduced to a poorly defined support class, 5 or 6th on the dps list <snip>

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What is this based on?

Pretty sure the posts I've read (from blues) have champ and hunter tied for first place in ROI dps. This is of course coming from an RK, who apparently was not even in the running. :)

Kinda reminds me of the old joke:

Rock is OP.
Paper is fine.
--Scissors

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Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

Dev Diary is going through the "processes" right now. I urge you to sink your teeth into that when it appears!

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Thank you for responding. Better very late than never.

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In the last update, I came upon a class that could stand to receive significant buffs. I tried to make many "sometime" skills into things you were encouraged to use more often (Heartseeker, Burn Hot, Fleetness) and to give Trapper line more potency.

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Fair enough.

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In RoT, Hunters no longer needed significant buffs (except to Trapper, more later on that.) The focus was more on adding variety to play, and throwing in a few fun skill upgrades. As with all betas, things that were too strong or too weak were changed. This process, coupled with our data showing Hunters sitting quite nicely on the dps charts, meant that RoI wasn't going to be the windfall of potency that the previous update was.

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I agree with that if we were on top of the dps charts (which I usually was on live) we didn't need any buffs. However, purported DPS parses from RKs were showing a high end sustained DPS in the 1500+ range. I was only capable of 1200 on the same target, even with a lot of parsing in different builds and after realizing that IQS needed to be placed in 'odd' places such as immediately after a ISB -then- followed with a fast skill to keep the rotation pause free.

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This does not mean that RoI isn't chock full of goodies. One thing I'm particularly excited about is the Stance changes. We've decided to decouple stances from role, allowing stances to be swaped more freely based on circumstances, as opposed to being dictated by traitline. The Trapper line is finally having it's damage penalty fully removed, and is being given a few new ways to debuff enemies. You're gaining a new focus building AOE skill: Split Shot. And one of the skill improvements is removing the cooldown from Penetrating shot!

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I did like the changes to all stances. In and of themselves they're all great changes. You DESPERATELY need to make changing stances more reliable/less laggy. It needs to be a fast skill. I can honestly say I will click on S:S while in S:P and only half of the time it goes off. With the built in CD it has you really don't have much of an excuse to say it would be OP for us to changes stances quickly once the CD is off. I've not tried the yellow line yet, while trying to dps. I'm really hoping it's as great as it sounds on paper. Thank you for that SS change. You did what I was hoping for with it. As it stood it was a poor replacement for RoA on CD.

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That all said, RoI may be the most ambitious expansion we've ever built from a systems perspective. The changes to itemization and stats are going to have ripple effects throughout the whole game. Things I'm keeping an eye on moving forward:
Make the difference between Huntsman and Bowmaster more extreme.
Legacy pass.
AOE damage capabilities.

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I don't like the sounds of this 'huntsman/bowmaster' idea to be honest. Given history, it sounds suspiciously like you're going to be focus starving red even more. I could be auto-reacting against change... but hunters generally have a right to fear change. We have a long history of nerfbat scars on our persons. As this update stands now I count it a -slight- nerf to the predominant form of the hunter, focus burn. Though I must say that the AoE-ability is a nice buff as is the yellow line.

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I'll be making a Q&A thread for over the weekend and try to keep tabs on it.

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Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Evebel

Kinda reminds me of the old joke:

Rock is OP.
Paper is fine.
--Scissors

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I love that quote so much, never gets old...


Anyway I play every class at level 65 currently, I raid with each one (not all in OD yet). Every class forum is screaming foul... What people fail to understand is we are going through a fundamental shift of almost every class with the new stat and itemization. Once again go to every class forums, you will find some one that has started a thread saying that the other class is getting it better. We won't know until we're level 75 geared and parses start to appear. :)

Get ready... a lot is changing. Strap yourself in... Its about to get bumpy.

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Originally Posted by Kheld_GB

Hunter was a lovely class,
That used to DPS.
With Zombies new changes,
The result we can only guess.

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There once was a young hunter named Pewpew
Who found the Trapper line "eew"
He dreamed of RoI's advance
but dreaded the change
As the last left him kinda "blue blue"




(Yes I know it's not a very good limerick but all the dirty ones would prolly be censored anyway :P)

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

The new AOE, split shot... well, *please* say you are aware that hunters hardly if ever use rain of arrows, rain of thorns (and now split shot) in groups. Most times at least one mob is CCed, and the new "amazing" Split shot is worthless. Even in solo we cannot use it without risking breaking out *own* CC like RoT, BA and that stun shot skill.
(until the times we have no one CCed of course). And with the damage Split Shot does, I am not sure I will even pick up the skill.

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Agreed

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

The new improved skills are *slower* than the normal ones. The after animation has severely reduced how often we can attack and thus dps.

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They removed the aftercast on IQS for something else (dunno what). Still some other animation issues though

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

And really? Parry bonus on Endurance? Really? What possibly use can we have for that? On a "never-use-in-melee" stance - we get a melee type bonus?

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Agreed

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

Please feel free to double the induction of penetrating shot, if we can keep our focus reduction skill.
Removing the induction - while making it SLOWER because of the after-animation effect. That is borderline insulting.

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Ok you totally lost me. First of all PS has no induction at all, how can we double what does not exist? Second, we have no focus reduction skill, we never have had one. Third, PS does not have a long aftercast, it's just like live but with no CD.

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Originally Posted by MurkyMajare

This time we are not happy, and why should we be? We have been reduced to a poorly defined support class, 5 or 6th on the dps list and we have not heard a single word from a developer before ZCs post today in a long, long time.

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We never were a support class really, and we are 3rd or 4th in beta (Champs, RKs, and for burst burgs) not 5th or 6th on the dps IF we trait exactly what they seem to be forcing us to trait.

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Originally Posted by gonewhaned

Every class forum is screaming foul... What people fail to understand is we are going through a fundamental shift of almost every class with the new stat and itemization.

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Capts, LMs, champs, and the vast majority of burgs are squealing with delight, not screaming foul. Rks are almost 100% upset about Lightning and healing but are delighted by the flame changes. Guards feel kind of ignored but are reasonably content. Wardens I don't know, minis I don't know. Hunters have a massively overwhelming sentiment against the new changes. So yes we are going through a fundamental shift, and the results are very poor for our class. It's not just that some other class gets it better. The issue is 2 or 3 other classes can out do us on our SINGLE role while they can preform multiple roles and instead of making us better at our single role, the devs want to add more pathetic attemps at preforming other roles.

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Originally Posted by Eldrandir

HI!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for the news about the Q&A thread and other things, but instead of more AoE can we just have even more extreme single target dps?

Will the Q&A thread be a poem?

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I will second that! RoA and RoT are situationally useful, but no one invites a hunter into a group for their AoE damage. I would far rather see my single target DPS raised than get more AoE skills. How often did Legolas really AoE attack with his bow? Our AoE comes from burning one target down so fast that we can move on to the next one quickly. Or at least that is the way it should be.

I understand that all classes seem to be being changed so that they can fill more roles if there normal role isn't useful in the particular raid or dungeon. But to buff our other roles at the EXPENSE of our main role is not what any hunter (that I have seen) wants. I don't know about all the parses that people are citing saying we are 5th on the sustainable dps list. I know you guys probably have the most accurate parses. But let me just say, if our sustainable, single target dps is lower than 2nd, I am sure these boards will stay full of complaints. If it is lower than 3rd...well I don't think I want to hang out on these boards if that ends up being the case. It will be too depressing.

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Originally Posted by Mateusaran

I will second that! RoA and RoT are situationally useful, but no one invites a hunter into a group for their AoE damage. I would far rather see my single target DPS raised than get more AoE skills. How often did Legolas really AoE attack with his bow? Our AoE comes from burning one target down so fast that we can move on to the next one quickly. Or at least that is the way it should be.

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They will now. As it stands now on live we are able to do 70-85% of what a champ does in AoE settings so this draws us closer. I'm fine with it. I'll be replacing QS fairly often with SS in anything with more than one target so I'm fine with it. I can see a ISB-RoA-SS-blood-SS-PS-SS> like rotation making lesser champs sweat bullets to keep above us on the ol' damage meter.

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I understand that all classes seem to be being changed so that they can fill more roles if there normal role isn't useful in the particular raid or dungeon. But to buff our other roles at the EXPENSE of our main role is not what any hunter (that I have seen) wants. I don't know about all the parses that people are citing saying we are 5th on the sustainable dps list. I know you guys probably have the most accurate parses. But let me just say, if our sustainable, single target dps is lower than 2nd, I am sure these boards will stay full of complaints. If it is lower than 3rd...well I don't think I want to hang out on these boards if that ends up being the case. It will be too depressing.

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I hear you. But I don't think we'll be 5th on the list. But third is where I see us being, which sucks. I think the 'thing' about our class is that a terribad hunter does 70% of what an elite hunter does where a terribad RK does 50% what an elite one does thus, you see a lot of hunters on the top of DPS lists by virtue of the lack of downward range. This skews the class DPS higher than other classes. Thus our top end keeps getting held steady to try and depress the class average down to where other class averages are... which sucks because that leaves our top end high and dry.

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Originally Posted by Vilost

Yes I know it's not a very good limerick but all the dirty ones would prolly be censored anyway

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There once was a hunter named Whiney
Who thought that he kicked lots of hiney
Thought red line was wower
'Till he ran out of Power
And his opponent removed his spiney

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Originally Posted by CWood

There once was a hunter named Whiney
Who thought that he kicked lots of hiney
Thought red line was wower
'Till he ran out of Power
And his opponent removed his spiney

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There once was a hunter forum full of theorycrafters
Who felt hunters were getting nerfed and given the shafters
Then the dragon they downed
and let their damage astound
And now all that is left is just laughter /cheating

The change of SS to a focus generator is very nice, doesn't make me all doom and gloom as much anymore :)

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Originally Posted by CWood

There once was a hunter named Whiney
Who thought that he kicked lots of hiney
Thought red line was wower
'Till he ran out of Power
And his opponent removed his spiney

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Lol nice!

/me claps

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Originally Posted by PiggyManHero

The change of SS to a focus generator is very nice, doesn't make me all doom and gloom as much anymore :)

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Still it involves an induction and a cast that is longer than IQS. For one focus this might prove useless.

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Originally Posted by Zombie_Columbus

That all said, RoI may be the most ambitious expansion we've ever built from a systems perspective. The changes to itemization and stats are going to have ripple effects throughout the whole game. Things I'm keeping an eye on moving forward:
Make the difference between Huntsman and Bowmaster more extreme.
Legacy pass.
AOE damage capabilities.

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please please please make our bow legacies more interesting. please combine the crits into one, the power reductions into one, and the threat downs into one, (instead of focus/inductions split) and give us a few more +damage and -(minus)cooldowns to bow skills, maybe even +durations to CC or buff effects.

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Originally Posted by VincentVanPort

Still it involves an induction and a cast that is longer than IQS. For one focus this might prove useless.

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It being useless was my impression from beta. If you want to AoE you should simpy spam RoA, inserting an IQS here and there whenever you need focus. When traited with Arrow Storm, Hail of Arrows, and Deadly Precision, and when there are 4+ mobs, RoA nearly always crits, and the focus generated from these crits and from stance passives is enough to sustain a rotation of RoA-RoA-RoA-etc until the number of mobs drops to less than 3-4. So far my record was 6 RoAs in a row, without any ability in between (unfortunately all the mobs were dead all dead by then, otherwise I could have made it higher).

To be honest, the only time when I could see justifying the use of split shot is during RoA's cooldown, when and if RoA fails to crit (though, with three or more mobs the chance of RoA criting is extremely high). Although, if for some reason you weren't traited with arrow storm, then you could realistically use this ability once every RoA cooldown.

Well we have to see what ZC has to say about it. Though half of weekend is gone and the answers are only stockpiling.

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Originally Posted by Fin.

Well we have to see what ZC has to say about it. Though half of weekend is gone and the answers are only stockpiling.

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a reminder... this is labor day weekend... so Turbine will probably re-open on tuesday, not monday

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Originally Posted by Forgotten_Legend

a reminder... this is labor day weekend... so Turbine will probably re-open on tuesday, not monday

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Oh did not know that. Was it announced somewhere that customer service will be limited during this event?

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Originally Posted by Forgotten_Legend

a reminder... this is labor day weekend... so Turbine will probably re-open on tuesday, not monday

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This is from ZC:

"I'll be on and off over the weekend, chatting when I can."

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Originally Posted by PiggyManHero

The change of SS to a focus generator is very nice, doesn't make me all doom and gloom as much anymore :)

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wait what? howmuch focus?

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Originally Posted by bfub467

wait what? howmuch focus?

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1 focus with an induction equal to barb's.


[QUOTE=moduz;5657289(unfortunat ely all the mobs were dead all dead by then, otherwise I could have made it higher).
[/QUOTE]

Need to get some friendly R0 defilers or WLs with no crit defense to nicely let you spam RoA for a decent amount of time for parses and just the heck of it.