Today is the very last post of the Hunter Bet over at WoW.com, and I think it’s a fun one. I take a look at the stat of the ammo, and then have a bit of discussion over how cool our ammo could be (and I hope it is).
So please, please, hop on over and leave a comment. Pitch in with how you think ammo should work, or what your idea for some awesome kind of ammo is. Or heck, Go over to the general Scattered Shots listing and revisit each article once to boost our pagecount on everything for the month. This is our last chance to prove we have a more dedicated community than the druids.
When last we checked, the druids were in the lead by a small amount. Let’s knock them out of place once and for all!
But ever since Blizzard first told us they’d be removing consumable ammo we hunters have been dreaming of how awesome our ammo could be. It might burst into flame on impact, or cut through armor, or heal us, or heck, for all we know it would serve as a mount so we could fire gnomish rogues into the face of bosses! ..Read More.
WoW.com Dreaming of Awesome Ammo
More items for my wish list! Great!
I posted this comment on Wow.com, but figured I’d ask here too. Someone mentioned a shot that boosted damage to Mechanical enemies. This reminded me of our lack the ability to Track Mechanicals. Does anyone know why we’re missing this category from the rest of our tracking abilities?
frost, if i may be so nosey, who chooses what topics you do at wow.com? i have been wondering this ever since you took the job, ive been enjoying it btw
@Underoath
Because it’d be completely useless
99% of the time I choose the topics (the 101 articles were assigned to all the class columnists). However, I do certain articles that wow.com just does for their columns that if I didn’t write them, I’d probably be assigned to them — like the wildly unpopular boss strat guides.
Under: our tracking gaps have been around since vanilla, and probably won’t ever get filled. In addition to mechanicals, we can’t track silithids, or oozes.
Most are pussies ovrer the sv spec because the don’t figure it out.. Bro i f-ing hammer in the middle of our 25 pro team in the sv spec.. It’s still representable, mm is a tough one to get the hang of, what about 1 out of aspect and 1 into rapid , seems viable as bossfights are less tha 5 min????
As far as tracking goes (altough offtopic) its logical as neither oozes, silithids or mechanicals have a distinct imprint.
What i mean is, by tracking you normally trace a path or footsteps and neither of those have a way of telling the direction. You could find out by analizing the exact imprint or the way f.ex. the grass is bent/broken but there is no way of doing that while actively moving.
So mostly the gaps are explainable (as far as blizzard still bothers to somewhat follow real life stuff or lore). But who knows… the old lore is gone as the known lore has ended. Cataclysm will actually be a new part in the warcraft universe and maybe that will change as well.
As far as ammo goes, special effects would be really nice to have…. but its more likely to follow the path of librams/totems in just giving a stat boost proc or mana reduction.
@Melenaus & Frost
Thank you for the reminder there are still other things we can’t track (and thus miss out on the added damage). I seem to come across more mechanical enemies, so this was the first gap which came to mind. All in all, I guess we really don’t have to deal with too many of these at this point in Wrath.
Back to the ammo issue–I think different types of ammo would be completely awesomesauce (especially Darkbrew’s idea for a Whisky Shot–hehe. . . sauce). I’ve been thinking about the need for various types of ammo since I took a break from WoW to play the JDM version of FFIII, where they have various elemental damage associated with the ammo. It’s too bad there isn’t more of an elemental focus in WoW, where you cause extra damage to an enemy based on their elemental focus. Holy ammo would be insane in ICC!
Great idea for ammo. Would be interesting to see a type of magazine introduced where you could put certain combinations of rounds in. For example:
30 Round Magazine
First 5 shots Venom Rounds (stacks the dot)
Next shot Incendiary Rounds (add crit)
5 Shots of Titan Shells (extra DPS)
so on and so forth.
You’d set your magazine before a boss pull depending on the fight. Give Shot Priority a new meaning.
F
Haha well what I was trying to say is that the amount of time we are killing, or tracking (by necessity) mechanicals is very, very small. Sure, there’s Borean Tunda. Gnomer. Mimiron’s wing, sure. But outside that… meh. Oozes too, Frost. I can’t even remember the last time I had to track/do serious dps on a fight for one. And even in solo content, 5% extra damage on mechanicals/oozes? Meh…
While different purpose ammo sounds interesting, I can see what will happen….
1. EJ finds out what ammo makes the most DPS
2. World finds out
3. Price goes through roof
4. No other “special” ammo gets made/used
5. That ammo is required before acceptance into any group by any hunter.
Ah, but that won’t happen with the kind of ammo I’m suggesting:
1. Spreadsheets theorycraft the best ammo.
The answer is:
– If you’re missing this buff, then use X ammo
– If you’re missing that buff, then use y ammo
– If you have all buffs, use Z ammo
– If you have all buffs but another hunter is using z, then you want d ammo
– Against some bosses, use e ammo
– Soloing use f or g ammo, depending
There will always be a “best” dps option to anything. But to make your ammo an actual decision the right answer need to change based on the situation. Then it becomes interesting. I don’t want something that’s super complex — but I do think it should have a lot of depth.
The idea is that the effects of each ammo are easily understood, but the choices are are difficult and many.
I agree wih Frost here. He has some very interesting ideas. But even if they would simply have a ammo like
ammo type A (normal type)
ammo type B (normal type, but 20% of damage is nature)
ammo type C (normal type, but 20% of damage is fire)
etc
(Or because nature/fire migitation is usually less, perhaps also reduce the dps bonus for type B/C/etc)
Then it depends on the type of boss which one is better. And it also depends on talents, as there are bufs/talents/etc that affect one type of damage more than others.
So Blizzard doesn’t have to go out of their creative minds of do major game changes to have different ammo types.
I like your idea of different ammo, tho I think Blizz would never make more than 3 ammo types, because of their game mechanics.
Btw Frost where are Arrows!?!
I guess I’m just too much of a crusty old fart……I think that ammo should remain as a consumable item and should cost something to buy. I like the damage that Shatter rounds / Iceblade arrows do but I dislike the fact that they are so cheap and that any level can use them. Make them available only at level 80…………and have better ammo for level 85 in Cat.
I worked hard for my dragonscale ammo pouch ( waves walking stick in the air )
Making it too hard, Frosty and company. Ammo change is as easy as cake..
a. Gun/sbows no longer require ammo, as in never-ending supply.
b. The basic damge of the ammo is folded into the weapon dps.
c. Special ammo enhancements can be done by making the guns/bows glyph-able(?).. with up to 3 ammo glyphs.
–> for reference look at real life evidence on how the Inuit, Taureg, Lakota, and Fiji Islanders used to decorate their bows/guns/harpoons.
d. The ammo glyphs would add the various enhancements discussed..
— Glyph of Incendrary Shot
— Glyph of Tracer
— Glyph of Frangiable Shot
…etc..etc..etc..
Frostheim-
I’ve had this idea since back in TBC. We all can pretty much agree that guns are too noisy. What I have in mind is a type of suppressor, made by engineers or blacksmiths, which can be applied to your gun much like like wizard oil. These would probably have a duration of an hour and would reduce the noise made and also provide 1% hit and 2% reduced threat. Or, along the same lines have subsonic ammo which would do the same thing.
Engineers should also be able to attach a grenade launcher to their gun/bow imo.