Even Blizz Gets Tired of Kicking Us Eventually

Blue post says:

Just to clarify, we have no plans to nerf Survival. We would like to solve some of Marks’ mana problems, though some predictions remain that Marks will overtake Survival with the best possible gear. BM is probably a little behind, which is something we also want to address.

This was a very nice post to see, because there was speculation that SV was looking at yet another explosive shot nerf. This is what I think is happening:

As players get better and better gear in the game, including Ulduar 25 gear, and then Ulduar 25 hardmode gear, the balance of classes is changing. Not too long ago Ghostcrawler actually posted on the forums that they were keeping an eye on hunter dps thinking that it might be too low across the board!

Overall, hunters do not scale as well with gear as many other classes do (however we scale great with buffs!). The result is that at the lower end of the gear totem-pole, hunters rock out on damage, but on the higher end, the other classes start to pass us by. Now MM hunters, on the other hand, scale a bit better than BM or SV do. And I do think that in Ulduar 25 gear we’re going to see the MM hunters passing SV by. Heck, even with my naxx gear when I’m testing MM builds I find my MM damage just about identical to my SV damage. The only differences are within the range of RNG randomness (however my consistent stomping of Arust’s dps in raids leads me to feel SV is certainly on top, at least for our gear level).

Now mana is a huge problem for MM — but if blizz addresses that without hurting their dps, then I think we may see a swing in the MM direction.

Beast Mastry? Oh yeah, you’re still screwed.

I think that BM hunters scale the worst with gear, because their pet doesn’t scale well with their gear. Thus back in the day when BM was legitimately broken, the appearance of how broken they were was exaggerated by the hunter gear scaling. We all had crummy gear, but great buffs, so seemed way on top of other classes. They then nerfed BM, as they should have, but nerfed ‘em to the frickin ground. Soon after as people got better and better gear BM fell farther and farther behind the dps curve. They did a slight un-nerf, but BM is still pretty sad compared to the alternatives.

So my prediction is that they leave SV more or less alone. They give MM another buff to mana regen, though the cynical part of me fears they will do it as an additional talent so that we have to choose between more dps or more mana regen. And BM will get a boost, but not big enough to put them in the top tier.

Then in patch 3.3 they’ll have to buff hunters again, as we continue to fall behind in the gear curve.

But fear not — for the time being we can still top the meters!