Monday, June 6, 2011

Recent 4.2 PTR patch notes

A couple interesting things from the patch notes for 4.2 posted on MMO Champion today. The first is that MM's mastery, Wild Quiver, is getting pretty significantly buffed. WQ procs are already a not-insignificant portion of my damage from parses, so this change is a pretty straightforward buff, probably to compensate for the nerf to Careful Aim. I'm still not entirely sure why the CA nerf had to happen, but presumably they had their reasons.

The second interesting thing is the buff to Black Arrow, for Survival hunters. I've been considering a mini-post on BA for a little bit now, because I've been thinking that it seemed like the ideal place to bring up Survival's damage. It's the tree's 31-point talent, which means that hunters really should want to keep it on cooldown, while in reality hunters are using explosive trap for LnL procs on mobs that don't move. That's a pretty straightforward design mistake, and making BA just Do More Damage not only helps bring the tree more in line with MM, it also makes that top-level talent feel decent instead of crap.

I still think they should tie Explosive Shot to weapon damage. The combination of that and the buff to BA would really address the tree's scaling issues (i.e.: Survival drops further behind with each new tier of gear) and help widen the options for what a hunter can play in end-game content. That, in turn, would be a boon for hunters in 10-person guilds, because Marksmanship is so dependent on having the 10% haste buff that it makes it very difficult to play in the absence of that buff. Being able to turn to Survival as a similarly high-damage alternative would be really helpful.

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