An Urgent Message for Blues, ZC in Particular

[Scotius]

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!)

[Zohal]

A funny poem
You can not
Have because
You is rot

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

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

[CWood]

W
r
o
n
g

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

[Eldrandir]

A funny poem
You can not
Have because
You is rot

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

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.

[Zohal]

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.

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"!

[Eldrandir]

P
e
w
-
p
E
w

Very nice lol

[Zombie_Columbus]

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.

[Eldrandir]

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

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?

[Edlenn]

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

[Fin.]

Can't wait for Q&A.

[Divona.]

Thank you very much ZC

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

[Kheld_GB]

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

[Highcyde]

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.

[droid]

AOE damage capabilities.

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.

[MurkyMajare]

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.

[Evebel]

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

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

[Thraxz1982]

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

Thank you for responding. Better very late than never.

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.

Fair enough.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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

Thank you.

[gonewhaned]

Kinda reminds me of the old joke:

Rock is OP.
Paper is fine.
--Scissors

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.

[Vilost]

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

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)

[Eldrandir]

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.

Agreed

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

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

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?

Agreed

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Mateusaran]

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?

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.

[Thraxz1982]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[CWood]

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

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

[Thraxz1982]

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

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

[PiggyManHero]

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