There’s been a lot of discussion about the removal of Volley, and I thought I’d interject a few thoughts about the state of dungeons in cataclysm at the moment.
Right now there are only three available for testing: Blackrock Caverns, Throne of Tides, and Stonecore. I did Stonecore only once when it was first available for testing and we didn’t finish it. In the latest build you have to actually go there, can’t port anymore, and many who try are getting stuck in the Maelstrom. Having just got my character unstuck in the last build, I don’t want to risk getting stuck and losing him again. But I’ve done BRC and ToT a lot.
State of Crowd Control
BRC has no CC required. ToT has two or three pulls that require CC. These are all groups of mobs that have two healers in them. I suspect that when we’re running this as a heroic for badges when we’re overgeared, we won’t be bothering with the CC there.
I don’t remember if we did any CC in our Stonecore run, but I certainly don’t recall any.
The pulls are still far less aoe than in Wrath. When we pull groups of 3-4 no one bothered with aoe, because our aoe was so heavily nerfed you needed larger groups for it to be worthwhile. If we still had our Wrath numbers we’d have aoed most pulls, but with Cataclysm weaker aoe, we just single-targeted stuff down.
AoE
While there isn’t much in the way of CC going on, there are aoe pulls in every one of those instance. In Stonecore there is a boss fight requiring aoe. I did it before Volley vanished. If I were to do it now… well, we’d have to rely on the other dpsers to handle the adds while the boss was submerged. I could take out one of them every here and there, but that’s about it. Mostly I’d just be watching the rest of the dps team play.
So from the only things we know about cata encounter design so far, aoe is still cropping up in every dungeon. It’s still part of the game, just not overboard like in Wrath.
Interaction and fun
Wow used to have a design philosophy where only certainly classes were aoe classes. Other classes either didn’t have aoe or they had crummy aoe. Hunters had the crummy kind — a super weak volley on a 30 sec cooldown. So we’d volley, then essentially sit around for 30 seconds while the aoe guys took care of that pull.
In my opinion, this is bad design. A dps class should be able to meaningfully contribute to the dps of just about any encounter.
As I’ve mentioned before, I used to work for a major table top game publisher, and I got to work and talk with some very talented game designers. The way that they viewed game design was endlessly fascinating to me. To them, “fun” was just another mechanic to be balanced, along with strategy, complexity, and intuitiveness. They could sit down and tell you what kind of mechanics made a game fun, and the different kinds of fun and how they appealed to different kinds of players.
There are a couple key things about fun. First of all — not doing anything is not fun. It’s boring, and it makes the game feel slow or long. This was especially a big deal for board games — you didn’t want any one person’s turn to last too long. But it was okay if the other player had ways of interrupting his turn — even if he didn’t use them, he still felt engaged. But just sitting and watching and waiting your turn to play is not fun.
Furthermore, success has to be based on your decisions (or at least have the illusion that it is): you have to be the one winning and you have to win because of what you do and how well you do it. If all you do is roll the dice and the highest number wins, that isn’t terribly fun, even for the winner. If all you do is watch stuff happen, that isn’t terribly fun either.
So let’s say that explosive shot was changed to do the same damage over 30 seconds that volley could do over 30 seconds. You drop explosive trap, and it ticks away just as if you were volleying. This is the same dps scenario, but you aren’t acutally doing anything for more than the first second. Even though you made the decision, even though the dps is the same, you aren’t doing anything, so it isn’t terribly fun.
Now Volley itself runs dangerously close to this. You hit volley and sit there and watch it rain down. This isn’t a winner of an ability, but it’s a zillion times better than doing nothing and watching other people play the game.
Solution
I’m sure there are a ton of solutions to the hunter aoe situation, and I very much hope that Blizzard is just trying to decide which one to use. The fact that they removed volley without implementing any kind of replacement at the same time is very worrying, however.
Multi-shot, I should point out, is not an aoe. It’s a multi-target attack, not an area of effect. Perhaps they could make multi-shot a conical attack or something. But it would in fact be very easy for Blizzard to improve on Volley with multi-shot or another ability. Something that had more interaction, that let us actual do things more than once per 10 seconds.
The LolLovers wouldn’t like it — they don’t like skill or decision making as part of their play experience — but they are an aberration, not the standard. Most people prefer that nice balance. Not too complicated, but not too simple. Enough decisions so they feel responsible for victory and enough interaction so they feel like they’re the ones doing the winning.
Can we use the new skill trap launcher do launch an explosive trap to replace volley?
Latest Per Ghostcrawler: “We think Multi-Shot is a more interesting ability and can fill the hunter AE niche (along with Explosive Trap). We’ll have to change Multi-Shot from the current version to get it there. I’m very sorry if for some unusual reason Volley was your favorite spell as a hunter. We’ve been trying to consolidate abilities and free up some bar space and having multiple AEs that competed with each other seems like a good area to hit up. The Volley and Multi-Shot niches were very similar, which resulted in the latter being dead. We wanted to pick one and we though Multi-Shot felt more huntery and less “clunky” (to use a favorite Wow forums term). ”
And he goes on from there, later stating “When you do need to AE, hunters will have the tools to do so.” I am glad he made the statement about changing the current multi-shot to get it where it needs to be to fill the AoE niche. I really have a hard time seeing Blizzard trying to give some classes (or class) an complete inability to AoE. Nothing to date suggests that their thinking is to revert to a gameplay style of “players standing around and doing nothing, while watching everyone else have fun”. We’ll have to wait and see what they come up with before the final judgment can be made.
@ Otto
As I was speculating yesterday, they are probably going to change Multi-shot to hit more targets or spray a bunch of arrows or bullets in a cone pattern in front of you…like a volley
At least that is what I think they would do as it makes the most sense. But who knows? Either way, I can’t really see letting hunters sit there with nothing to do during trash pulls. That being said, you can still single target adds and help with the burning…you just don’t get the benefit of spamming one button.
The old problem comes to mind with mulit-shot. The fact that it could and did hit other targets next to the mob you were shooting at. This usually resulted in a not so pretty “who pulled that?” from the tank. I just found the control of were volley went and what it would hit way more useful in instances.
Could it be that Blizzard expect Hunters to combine abilities such as Explosive Trap launches with Multi-Shots and single target burning as our means of contributing to mass pulls?
If so I have no real problem with that as long as our DPS contribution is not seriously nerfed by it.
At this point, I hesitate to make any judgment calls. With the current changes of our class, a channeled AoE just doesn’t make sense. It’s one of two attacks that pushback matters on, and one that could be effectively crippled by it. Thus, you have the most 1-dimensional need for pushback protection of any class in the game. All functional numbers aside (lets be honest, they can and have adjusted numbers without even applying a patch, lol ES hotfix) Multishot -is- a more entertaining shot than Volley. Imagine if you will, they change it to hit all targets within a radius, and remove the cooldown, perhaps adjusting the focus cost appropriately. A “fan of bullets” if you will (I love that). Now it’s alot more compelling. We can run and gun with it, even interspersing SS/CoS with it to keep focus flush. Now it’s an activity rather than standing there for 5s posing with your gun. However, and this is a big however, we need to see what’s actually coming. Be realistic, it’s about as likely that they’ll leave us with worthless/no AoE as it is that they’ll let us keep the no minimum range. Shaman would be a perfect example of this philosophy, changing the existing abilities to shore up this particular hole. Just kick back a thick beer and ride tight for the moment, the next couple of beta pushes may be bumpy.
thats what its sounding like, combine multi-shot with traps to make an aoe effect. who knows, maybe blizzard will work on this situation at hand. maybe cata will be different where the mobs need to be aoe’ed by certain classes while hunters and pick off single targets? still, its still in the process, alot could chnage still.
Frost, I thnk I saw your post on the Beta forums, about 5 minutes after I posted on the normal hunter class forums, it almost sounded like a copy.
“Buck-shot” or “Shot Gun” (as I put it) would be a nice adaptation for the multi-shot, as long as we got to see where the spray was going to go. Like what Bremara said, we really don’t want to go back to “who pulled that?”, that is NOT fun. Give me a cone of fire I can control.
For some reason I have this idea in my head that Volley should be a Multi-Hunter ability, like for a raid, if you have >1 hunter the ability becomes active for a massive aoe. A volley from one hunter just doesn’t make sense in a definition sense: “the simultaneous discharge of several weapons, esp firearms” We have 1 weapon, not serveral.
Im at a loss truly. Im don’t really like volley either. But a multishot is not an aoe. So unless they intend to make it “Bullet Spray” and call it an ae, they did gimp the class. It would be different if every mob activated a trap, but all of us know that he hall before Putricide didn’t set our traps off. I know I tried my first go in there, and was saddly disapointed. So Im all for volley gone as ae, but they need to get all the kinks worked out of the traps before they tell us to depend on them.
The main problem with multishot over volley is that multishot is more likely to pull unaggroed mobs than volley. For volley to pull a mob has to walk into the area affected, which in most cases would mean being close enough to the tank to pull anyway. A stray multishot can veer off and hit an unintended (or CCed) target. This is one of the main reasons multishot is often just not used by hunters.
I agree with the sentiments that Multi Shot is not an AoE. GC equating the two is just daft and adds more fuel to my fire of not believing that they really know what to do with the Hunter class.
The problem with redesigning Multi Shot to be a conical AoE is that we need to be at significant distance to use it in order to make use of any true AoE damage. If we’re too close it will only hit a couple of targets and if the mobs are not concentrated we lose damage. With Volley having a fairly wide radius, mobs don’t have to be tightly packed, but with a conical MS it means the tanks need to really pay attention to how and where they round up adds and that’s asking a lot for trash.
Volley works well, it does what it needs to do and that’s why we use it over Multi Shot. I can imagine that the devs are sitting around now wondering what to do because they took out a functional ability and needing to redesign an existing ability to equal the functionality of the removed Volley.
I’m all about the fluff and well tbh Volley just didn’t fit the bill for hunters esp those using X-bows and guns. Firing off volley with a gun and seeing arrows rain down on the enemy…I mean come on!
I’d be glad to see Blizz tweak Multi-Shot to make it more useful. I didn’t even use MS as BM in place of Aimed Shot when I didn’t spec for the latter shot. Ricochet is a nice mechanic (sort of like chain lightning for shamans as has been pointed out). A Frontal cone attack is another option that can work as long as you can control MS.
The Amazons in Diablo have a Multi-Shot attack and it scales with lvls so it has the potential to fire off more arrows at higher lvls so i suppose it could work for hunters in WoW. But let us see where Blizz goes with this.
Frost, I liked your points about fun mechanics. But to your point that explosive trap “isn’t terribly fun” and Volley skirts the no-fun zone — what would be an example of an AoE attack that IS fun?
My only toons right now are hunters and an Affliction Warlock. Volley/Rain of Fire are nice to look at and I need them for numbers and sometimes grinding, but they’ve never been really been fun. The warlock just got Seed of Corruption, though — maybe that will be fun? I’m not sure, but it’s still just hitting a button and waiting for a big explosion.
The whole idea of AoE spells seems to involve less attention — attack once, hit everybody — and less decision-making. So what are some examples of AoE that pass the fun test?
The funny thing is I almost never use Volley in raids/dungeons, at least not enough to miss it. But where I do use it, and will miss it greatly is farming. We have so little in the way of melee damage that, I frequently just bust out Volley when farming. For instance if I am mining a node and pull something, usually something that is way low for me, I can just bust out Volley and have them dead in no time, rather than having to melee them to death or get out of range. Yeah I take damage, and yes taking damage with a channeled effect is not ideal, but it certainly gets the job done, and it often is more effective than pure melee. I think that the fact that you can Volley in melee range is something that many people are forgetting about. Yes, they want hunters to be ranged, but some means to deal with melee range is nice to have.
When I love Volley even more is when I am farming large packs (leathers for instance). I love to send my pet out from one critter to the next till they have a pack on them, then run into the middle and Volley the circle of death. (This is especially satisfying when it is a really low group and they all fall down in a perfect domino doughnut around you). This is something I suspect will be a thing of the past.
Farming I fear is going to be very annoying after Cata. And as sad as this is, I actually do enjoy farming, yes I know I am weird. The idea of having to kill mobs one at a time to farm them seems depressing and tedious. I really hope they keep this side of game play in mind as well as raids/dungeons. Giving us some utility to kill multiple low level targets does not hurt any part of the game, and really makes it more enjoyable. I think they could find a way to give us something for this side of things without worrying about balance issues in raids/dungeons. There are people who like to farm, like to work on professions, farm for rare drops, get the explorer achievements, etc. etc. Making that aspect of the game still fun and less tedious is still something Blizzard should be cognizant of in balancing.
The idea of a shotgun/conical multi shot is nice, but still requires you to be at a minimum range. In short it is not the same.
Perhaps they can do something with pets to take the place. A decent AOE from a pet would go a long way but at the same time, there are some areas I farm where my pet can kill the target in one hit. That does no good as if I can not get a hit off I can not loot it. I understand why they do that, otherwise people would take their pet somewhere good to farm and leave them on aggressive while they follow and loot. But perhaps they could allow us to loot things that are killed only by the pet if we manually control them. That could be one solution. Or allow for a AOE debuff or mark or something so as to get control of the creature and then let the pet AOE them if they are not going to let us.
Another option would be to take this weapons proc http://www.wowhead.com/item=7717 and give it to us as an actual skill in some form. It would still be within the realms of a hunter, but would give us *something* we could do to multiple targets when swarmed in Melee range by little annoying ankle bitters.
Frost, I think you are too much attached to Volley as a mechanic. It’s not like channeling abilities are really fun.Following your example:
If explosive trap was changed to do the same damage over 30 secs that volley could do over 30 seconds. You can launch explosive trap with trap-launcher and it ticks away just as if you were volleying.
However, you now have around 27 seconds left to do actually do something.
E.g. You can run in and drop a snake-trap, then disengage en fire one or more Multi-Shots.
Not only would you do more DPS, you would also be more active doing it. Now if it is more fun is something personal but it does mean that Hunters will have more decision to make in order to optimize their AoE dps.
I think that especially MM hunters should look forward to this change because at the moment readiness is useless with Volley. But with the ability to use 2/4 traps in a row who knows what kind of dps they can do.
Generally agreed, My primary concern with using multi-shot in any AoE capacity would be CC’d targets since multi-shot is basically uncontrolable.
That being said, I do enjoy using multi-shot in RS on trash packs like the groups with the commander where the commander gets CC’d far away from the rest, but it is better to single target burn the adds down than AoE them. In this scenario I will multi-shot since there are no CC’d targets in the group and there is enough distance between groups that I am not going to oopsidentally pull something.
@StitchMonkey: you can (and often i do) put down (or launch, in Cata) an ExplosiveTrap.
And, generally speaking, we also have Snake Trap to do AoE, a wonderful (visually) tool that we are not using in PvE. So, it could be nice if they’d boost both AoE traps, and give them some interaction with Multishot…
@Nightpath I know there are other options, but traps have cooldowns, and have to be tripped, etc, I just prefer Volley. I think i may force myself to go out and try snakes and explosives tonight just to get a feel.
Getting some synergy going on as you suggest could be very interesting indeed.
Heck I might even be happy with just letting us trip our own traps even.
Anyone considered having a pet based AoE (especially for BMs)? Maybe something like a feral’s swipe? Or having some pet AoE effect combined with multi-shot and/or explosive trap?
How easy that would be to actually control is another thing though…
Great Post Frost. Unlike many of the responders, I absolutely agree with you. The loss of the volley spell will be a great reduction in our ability to contribute dps to the group. We must have some type of AOE capability or we will be basically watching the rest of the group down a pack of mobs while we concentrate on one at a time with an occasional multi-shot mixed in. People need to realize that we will still be running thru ICC even after CAT arrives. I am postive that weeklys will send us there just like the take us to NAXX and ULDAR today. Volley is very very important to the groups success in ICC. I am fearful that raid leaders will opt to not invite hunters if we do not have AOE capability. While I understand that the final Cat design has not been completed – I am very concerned about what the loss of AOE does to the hunter. Multi-shot is not an AOE and as mentioned above can easily pull a mob that should not be pulled.
Justa,
That was my thought. I would love to see my pet run around a pack of mobs slashing at them. Of course this will have the same effect as the old multi shot pulls, with our pet wildly running around the room pulling everything in sight.
What could work is something a kin to volley. You get the same green circle to place on the ground and your pet runs that circle swiping at everything in the circle.
I have grown interested in the idea that our pets should matter. I have also grown less interested in volley. It feels too much like I go in to a dungeon, spam volley, then burn boss and we’re done.
While I am please volley is gone from that standpoint, I agree with frostheim, it needs a replacement ability. Shuffling that replacement off to our pet might help. It might also be something only bm can spec in t, making bm relevant for some encounters. This would also have the added effect of making our decisions more necessary. Using explosive trap, multi-shot and chopper sick….uhmmm I mean sick em boy/girl, all in conjunction with each other makes for a fun experience and gives us more buttons to press.
“The whole idea of AoE spells seems to involve less attention — attack once, hit everybody — and less decision-making. So what are some examples of AoE that pass the fun test?”
Running around spamming Arcane Explosion or Holy Nova is pretty fun!
I like any effect that involves words like “synergy” or “interaction”… they could even add a small aoe effect to multishot, for example little explosions and/or poison clouds (refreshing snake venom effect / explosive trap periodic damage?)
Anyway reading again the comments it seems that boosting a bit our other (already existing) tools could do the job (first of all Explosive Trap)… personally i do not like for SV/MM the Swipe pet effect, but it could be cool for BM.
The following is what happens on all trash mobs in hc’s and ICC: Tank/s engage mobs, I MD, run in after the tank, place Explosive Trap (and sometimes Snake Trap), disengage and spam Volley til the cows come home (or well when the mobs lay dead at the tank’s feet/hooves whatever).
Not much thought going into it and not terribly exciting I might add. Nice to see the numbers we can pull esp in ICC as Frost pointed out some time back but it is a crazy time for AoE and something that needs changing. But that’s half the problem when we horribly outgear content…
I wouldnt be surprised if mutlishot just gets the target number set to infinite. Kinda like the warriors whirlind – only does 50% damage (like whirlwind) but hits as many targets as there are.
This, backed up with a proc mechanic (MM focus restore, SV serpent sting applied) could make us never remember volley again. Not to mention using snake trap and explosive trap, either jumping in, FD, disengage or firing it trough the launcher.
On the topic of breaking CC and aggro’ing the hidden mob – Don’t. I don’t mean to be virulent about this, but it’s one of my pet peeve’s about what i consider to be bad hunter play. If there’s a sheep dancing on the edge of the pack, or you even -suspect- there may be a mob off to one side, hold your fire. Ask the tank to pull the mobs back, you can even create a macro for it to use in randoms. If the encounter is challenging enough that either of these situations matter, (nearby mobs and CC) the caution is worth the momentary loss of dps. If it’s not challenging enough to be a threat, just MD before you unleash hell
This doesn’t just go for hunters either, but anyone with an AoE (I’m looking at you Pallies).
My main is a hunter, but I use a Shaman as an alt and with no real aoe on my shamy I almost feel useless in dungeons. It is extremely frustrating to see others take down mobs while I wait for chain lightning to cast. So why not implement some thing like a rocket launcher that launches an aoe bomb, or maybe a flame thrower type aoe. Could you imagine your hunter standing there spewing flame over everything. Awesome!!!! They could implement the flame thrower or rocket launcher as a hunter quest item that attaches to your weapon that will transfer to other weapons.
I for one will miss volley in BGs. Nothing like volley when the horde is trying to take MT in EotS and all are inside the tower waiting for you to come in and then kill you because you have a minimum range and can not shoot. I just stand outside and direct my volley inside, then they have to come to me on the outside where I can get range or die from my volley.
One of the reasons no one uses Multi-shot now is because it is linked to aimed shot and any decent hunter has aimed shot instead of multi-shot on their bars.In beta they gave Surv hunters serpent spread which requires multi-shot to work, then they realized that we don’t use multi-shot so they had to do something to make us use multi-shot so there goes volley. Unless they boost multi-shot and explosive trap by quit a bit hunters just wont have an AOE ability. Multi-shot and a trap very 30 secs is not AOE. In a way that wont be to bad considering the CC is suppose to be more prevalent in Cata raids, and now we wont be blamed for breaking CC because we used volley but all those classes that still have AOE spells and use them, like they do now, and break CC will have new names like wartard, pallytard, magetard and so on. Also consider this, a lot of the player base started after wrath came out so unless they do a lot of PVP they wont even know how to CC targets properly.
How to Get Unstuck in Maelstrom
I have done this 3 times so I believe this procedure should be duplicatable. As you may know there is an option to “Unstuck” your character on the “?” where you file an open ticket. “Unstuck” has a cast time. You will want your hearth on a hot key to cast because timing is important. Keep in mind when you release to rez there is a fraction of a second before it kills you again. We are taking advantage of this window.
So cast “unstuck” just before it finishes its cast, release to rez then immediately hit your hot key to hearth. Although hearth has a cast time, it does not seem to matter in this case. Doing all three at the same time will rez and hearth you.
Keep in mind if you don’t get the timing down, you can only use the “Unstuck” feature a couple times before a CD on unstuck comes into effect. I don’t know how long the CD is but it’s less than 30 and more than a couple minutes. Hope this helps. Since I had finished all the quests, I used the time to go tame some new pets.
Keep on them Frost. I dropped playing my Spriest because it was just no fun to try and ramp up spells and get left behind while other dpsers had a blast AOEing trash down. It was justified by the “hybrid tax”. By the time they came up with Mind Sear, it was too little, too late. I like dpsing so I decided to try out hunting and have been having a great time with it!
Does explosive trap and snake trap still work together in cata?
I don’t think I could have seen it worded better then you did so there. Thanks for the excellent article. You hit the nail on the head when talking about watching other play the game because we can no longer contribute anything as hunters in an AoE situation.
It is fun to join in with others in mass destruction in the opening halls of ICC, if we did not have volley it really would not be fun because everyone else is blasting away things in mass and we are sitting there picking one target at a time. It isn’t about DPS, it is about “why should I even bother, they are going to kill everything at the same time anyway”. No fun at all.
And thank you very much for pointing out the fact that everything will turn into an AoE fest again as soon as we start to get gear like it did with LK. (The blizzard designers seem to forget about that, please beat it into them with a sledgehammer) There might be need for CC now but being the way they give out gear upgrades it will only be a matter of time before we are AoEing everything down again just like in LK and the hunters will be sitting back watching because we have nothing to do.
Volley might be lame fun… but at least it is more fun then watching someone else do the AoE.
To me, the AoE question isn’t a huge problem. I actually like the idea of there being class-specific roles that not everyone can perform.
Also, adding a buckshot cone-effect to multi-shot seems pretty easy to implement (well, to someone who knows nothing about the Blizz programming =D ), and could compensate for the lack of Volley-DPS fairly well.
What makes me a little sad is that it sounds like Frost is saying that there’s not much more need for tactics using things like CC in the upcoming dungeons.
In my mind, the single biggest problem in the game today is that of the gogogo-AOE-overgear dungeons. Frankly, it’s boring…even taking into account the reasonable gear-levels when Wrath first came out.
It also leads to the type of player which seems to inhabit every single PUG for the last year or so. That of the welfare-epic spoiled brat who calls everyone noobs and whines about speed, assuming that there’s no need to think about or explain any fight. In their defence, that’s somewhat true.
Taking away the need for CC & other tactics within pulls has led to a homogenization of instances that, I think, is the biggest detriment to the game right now, and I hope that they take the opportunity of Cataclysm to re-incorporate it. There would be a lot of whining for a while as inexperienced players climbed the learning curve, but I think that it would result in a lpayer base that would be having more fun, feel more useful, and take more pride in their role.
I wonder if there’s still no need for CC if you show up in your lvl 70-79 greens, quite a different gear level on that compared to most testers that run arround in toc/icc and equivalent gear.
If you take that difference in gear, you’re almost already at the stage of steamrolling the content as far as normal mode goes. The difference between having that lvl75 green cause you’re levelling or icc epic is just to huge.
Volley was a very boring AoE spell. Two examples of fun ae are living bomb and seed of corruption. Both of these could be put on multiple mobs at once and go off in a chain reaction. When I would raid with my mage or lock, those are the ae’s i would use because the dps numbers were about the same, and I was engaged in the fight the entire time.
Off the top of my head, I think MS could work like this:
You select a target (preferably one close to the tank), and fire off MS. Other enemies within a certain range of your target will be subject to the attack (keeping this close to the aggro range of the tank would help reduce unwanted pulls), and the number of enemies affected levels with the hunter. Then all that’s left to think about is the damage, focus cost, and cooldown, and I don’t have the skill to guess at those. The only potential problem is that it’s less controllable than Volley, Rain of Fire, etc. But considering that it would be an AoE that has no channeling, just a cast time, a hunter would have a very unique way of doing AoE this way.
Thoughts?
Since people have asked about ‘What AoE is fun?’, I put on my thinking cap and found a couple.
Explosive Sheep and Explosive Decoy.
Now I know that these are Engineering toys, but I remember being level 20ish building my first Explosive Sheep. I simply had to use it at my first opportunity. Throwing dynamite was okay, but setting a cute little sheep down to trot out into the fray along side of my bear, well my friends, that was FUN!
Maybe we need something to use like a ‘Rat Swarm’ or ‘Where? Behind the Rabbit?’ kind of ability where a swarm of fuzzy rodents swarms the enemy. That could be fun.
Glyph of Piranha for those underwater zones of course.
I think a more fun aoe would be one where you hit buttons more often. Pushing your button and just sitting there watching it isn’t as fun. Thus holy nova is big fun. It doesn’t need to be hard to use or super complex (it’s a small part of the game, after all) but more interaction is more fun.
I am happy there changing AoE. A little disappointed to here that there is still significant AoE in Cata. I reset recount after the trash before Marrogwar and its funny the people who drop in the meters.
The 2 dogs are another example of this one has adds the other doesn’t = different meters. Druids doing 70k AoE dps is just ridiculous. If hunters did that we would dominate the meters point blank…by much wider margins than even more than those pesky rogues.
*they’re
…
I for one LOVE volley. I use all the time to quickly get me through dungeons and farming. I don’t mind it being a channeled move. It seems Blizz is looking at Volley as more of a magic spell as opposed to something you could do with a bow or gun. With the change to focus, it almost seems to make sense to get rid of “magic” moves for a hunter, but I LOVE aoe damage.
In my mind, all characters should be able to do at least some decent aoe. Otherwise single target characters will be badly outclassed when pulling mobs who die fairly quickly.
I think they should change rapid shot to be something like the strafe move for amazons in diablo 2. Have the same circle indicator as volley but instead of raining death from above, we shoot all the targets in the circle in rapid succession while channeling.
I hope Blizz either gives the hunters some aoe or maybe makes at least 1 mini boss per mob that has more hp so the single target dpsers have something to focus on.
I will miss my beloved volley. *weeps*
I agree that AoE could be more fun. I’ve always been surprised at how excited others are to AoE down a dungeon when I find it mind-numbingly boring. This isn’t just other classes who may have more interesting AoEs, like Seed of Corruption (that one is more fun), but it’s other hunters. Bind Volley to “1.” Spam (basically). Yay?
Here’s an idea for BM AoE: multiple pets and the ability to command them to either 1) all engage the same target or 2) engage multiple targets
You can stay engaged by commanding each pet to attack a new target after the one it was on dies. Call it Army of Pets, or Beast Army
Ran ToT for the first time tonight. Didn’t miss volley at all. For aoe pulls I would launch a launch snake trap then explosive trap into the tanks aoe. More action than just volley and was just as effective as the boomkins aoe. CC, silencing shot and and scatter shots used liberally to reduce the incoming damage on the 5 mob pulls. It was the most fun I’ve had in a 5 man in a long time
They could give each hunter spec its own flavor of AoE. Currently SVL alreayd has the serpentsting add on multishot, which is a good start, perhaps they could build on this and add soemthing equivalent to blood boil and allow us to make stings jump in SVL.. The other option would be to allow explosive shot to do splash damage like it did wotlk beta.
MM could be allowed more targets for their multishot, or have it turn into an AoE like suggested in the post. Perhaps frost trap could have frost damage added so it complemented explosive trap in terms of aoe, especially considering the trap launcher is now usable.
And BM could allow more pet cleave attacks, allowing you to chuck your pet into the centre of a load of adds and see them get ripped appart. Alternatively they could have an improved snake trap, but that would be a little dull.
Anyway just my idea for making aoe interesting.