hunter ammunition at a glance

Now for World of Warcraft hunters specifically, we think the class is just too cooldown limited, which creates problems with haste. hunter ammunition - We’ve driven in that direction in order to give World of Warcraft hunters a more interesting rotation, and to be fair, we feel like we’ve done that. But being cooldown limited isn’t necessarily a fun way for the class to play and we think it’s one of those things that makes World of Warcraft hunters feel more like casters than like ranged-weapon users. (World of Warcraft hunters are casters in the sense that they’re ranged dps, but we still want the emphasis to be on the gun or bow.) More on this at BlizzCon, too.

While we had previously reduced the range of the WoW hunter’s dead zone, it’s still brought up as a concern hunter ammunition. Is it possible to remove the dead zone completely? If this is not something under current consideration, what are the current design philosophies and balance reasons behind keeping this particular mechanic in-game? It’s possible to do so technically, but something we aren’t likely to do. Personally I think calling the current implementation a dead zone is just confusing and trying to sell the problem as worse than it is. Back in the day there was an actual distance at which neither ranged nor melee attacks would work – it was a dead zone. Currently there is just a minimum range for most ranged attacks. The way we want the WoW hunter to work is that when you get into min range with the WoW hunter, then the WoW hunter needs to switch to melee, or more likely escape back to ranged distance again. We certainly don’t want the WoW hunter to unload with both melee and ranged attacks at once – that might make them operate better at melee than range. Casters by contrast don’t have to do this, though it is often in their best interest to do so since their cast can get delayed or even interrupted by melee attacks. You can argue it’s goofy to be firing bows or rifles at point-blank range, but really it gets more into how we want the WoW hunter (and all ranged weapon attacks) to work. read more …