Talk:World of Warcraft: Raiding the Metagame

From AJS.COM

2007-05-01: Arena bow nerf

moved commentary from main page -ajs 18:49, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

"A side note from Fujilives"

9 base damage is -huge- where any knowledgeable hunter would be concerned.

Thats like saying "we are no longer allowing scopes to be placed on this weapon". Its roughly the equivalent of losing the 10 damage scope (though I'd be putting on the higher one, to a weapon of this caliber)

In the grand scale of a single raid, that "small dent in top-end crits" represents hundreds of thousands of points of damage lost.

And as for the hunter's mark "buff", this will pretty much only help on bosses. Nothing else will live long enough to see a return on that cast, when you could have instead cast a simple arcane shot -> autoshot and raked in 1500-3500 damage easily. In order for a single fight to return enough to even be worth marking, it'd have to last at least half a mana bar. The only reason I mark now, is because, quite frankly, there is a time each fight we are doing nothing while we are waiting for a tank to establish threat control.

If it needs to be done, then it needs to be done, and its still a fantastic weapon. But simple ".1 speed reductions" and "9 damage small dent losses" are a freakin huge deal to anyone who bothers to try and break those number barriers down. --Fujilives 17:36, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

I think there's a point being missed, here. Problem is, lots of people seem to be missing it. As soon as word of a change comes down, everyone leaps to the negative. It's 9 less damage on the high-end. The reduction is by 2.9% That doesn't affect dps, because the shot rate increased, but in PVP sometimes one or two shots matter, and big burst damage will be reduced by 2.9% base (which does not affect AP increases, so overall crits will be reduced by less than that... probably more like 1-2% on average, though that's a guess that would require selecting example gear builds to make concrete. So, an overall 1-2% "nerf" to burst damage from crits. Meanwhile PVP will benefit from the increased viability of the survival tree (a 31/30 or other hybrid MM/SV build is very attractive in 2.1), gaining 4% AP, and over fights that are any longer than a couple of shots, a substantial boost in hunter's mark AP.

Ah, but you say that the hunter's mark buff won't matter except on bosses. I have news for you. In tests on PTR, a relatively flat 4% increase in dps has been measured from the new hunter's mark on short fights, and even in PVP, 5-10 shots on a marked target are NOT rare. So yes, you have reduced "surprise, I'm home!" burst damage by 1-2% and markedly increased damage for a fight that lasts 5+ shots. Blizzard has made it quite clear with TBC that they want to eliminate one- and two-shot fights. They want stamina high. They want resilience high. This is more of the same trend, toward all classes (oh yeah, this "nerf" now appears to be affecting all PVP high-end weapons... at least according to the boards) fighting longer and really having to manage their class, not just know the right opening shot to use. This is not a nerf. This is an evolution of the PVP mode of combat, and I happen to think it's good. Then again, I haven't PVPed since 60, so perhaps I have it wrong, and short two-shot fights are a good thing now. Maybe. But, I doubt it. -ajs 21:26, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

Followup: I did some Eye of the Storm to get a feel for current PVP. Nothing has changed other than the reduced number of one-or-two-shot kills. PVP has been changing in pretty much exactly the way that I discussed above, and 2.1 seems to be on-track for doing much the same. -ajs 11:28, 14 May 2007 (EDT)