OctoWow - Forums

The most OP spec for hunter must be MM, as it was the most buffed spec in 1.18.1.

To understand how to balance it out, at first I want to write down the mechanics of the spec:
1. Aimed shot basic casting time is lowered to 2 sec
2. Critical damage procs cause Aimed shot cooldown to be removed and casting time to be lowered to 1 sec (Lock and Load talent)
3. Aimed shot hits cause arcane shot, multishot and serpent sting to be buffed on the next cast (Experimental Ammunition talent)

So basically MM hunter starts shooting, some hits crit, it causes Aimed shots and buffs to other abilities, and if there are more crits, there are more aimed shots and buffs.
It does not seem to be bad design, it actually requires some skill and addons to utilize all these procs, and it's good.
So everything is built around crit chance and Aimed shot.
In low gear hunter does not get much crit, so it cannot be the problem.
What's left is Aimed shot.
The damage calculation formula for Aimed shot in 1.18.1 on lvl 60 was:
weapon damage + 700 + some small scaling from AP
The damage was strong even in T3 gear, and in low gear this flat 700 damage makes it deadly.
What I suggest is to rebalance this formula into:
weapon damage + 300 + some medium scaling from AP
The scaling should be done in a way that the new formula's damage equals to the old formula's damage for a hunter in T3,5
It will immediately make MM not that bursty in low gear, and hopefully will be enough to fix the problem

After played for some time I realized that at the current phase there is no problem with MM hunter's damage on bgs. Also MM hunters usually do not live long enough to cast those Aimed shots anyway.
The things that I'd like to be tuned:
1. Hunter pets need to get all the dampening effects: both for incoming and outgoing damage. They are easy targets for players who got enough burst now (like 2 casts for some shamans, it's really fast), and they do increased damage to players cause no dampening applied, so we get those forum posts about pets being too strong. The base dampening would fix it all.
2. Hunters in surv and MM specs still really need a cast kick cause resto/prot shamans can just cast heals and do their things while they got enough mana, and surv/MM has no way to interrupt them.
3. Some way to break distance for MM and to cross the distance for Surv is still needed.

I'd move Scatter shot from MM tree into basic abilities, and make it into a 2-seconds stun with 2 more seconds slow effect. It would be at the same time cast kick, a way to break distance and a way to cross the distance. And not OP, cause other classes got multiple stun, slow and interrupt abilities with longer duration