Thursday, January 9, 2014

Battling Button Bloat

As WoW gets older and older, every class gets more and more abilities. This is fun. It's a part of why we level up-getting new abilities is exciting and makes us feel more powerful. But each new active ability comes with a new button, and many feel we now have just too many buttons. I have to agree. At this point my level 90 hunter has a lot of buttons. So many that I'm struggling to get them all laid out without buying a fancy gaming keyboard-which I don't think I should have to do just to play the game appropriately. So I have spent the last couple weeks thinking about which abilities could be cut-or at least changed to reduce our number of buttons.

I am looking at this mostly from a PvE perspective. I have been running some BGs as of late, so I'm not completely avoiding PvP implications, but I imagine some of these ideas will upset hard core PvP hunters. Extreme solo hunters won't be happy either, but we can't balance the game around soloing. Sorry. Regardless, other than one of these abilities, it wasn't easy to find many candidates I could simply say goodby to. Easy or not, my hit list for abilities to get rid of or change is as follows.

Immolation Trap: This was the easy one. Seriously, when was the last time you cast it? I don't even know when it was last on my bars.

Camouflage: I know people like it in PvP, but it never seems to help me much. In PvE all it has ever done is allow me to finish quests without killing mobs I don't need. Convenient? Yes. Necessary? Nope. Most importantly, the flavor of a stealth ability feels really roguey. Getting rid of Camo might be a tiny step toward fighting the homogenization of classes that many are concerned about these days.

Widow Venom: Never used it in PvE, and never felt like it did much in PvP. Am I missing something?

Distracting Shot: The last time I used this in a raid was Firelands. That might have been the ONLY time I used it in a raid. Had there been a need for it more than once in 5 tiers of boss fights I would have suggested making it a situational talent. If we really need a taunt other than our pet's, there could be a glyph that changes Misdirection from threat into a taunt. But honestly, I'd rather just see it go and force hunters to rely on a combination of pet management and MD.

Freezing Trap or Wyvern Sting: We don't need two single-target CC spells. In the bad old days when traps could only be used out of combat, having both made more sense. Today, not so much. Get rid of one-it doesn't really matter which. I'd opt for keeping the trap just because traps are a signature of our class.

Hunter's Mark: I realize this has some major PvP implications. I love keeping rogues out of stealth as much as anybody, but since it got baked into a bunch of shots it hasn't been on my bars at all. This is another place where a glyph could be created to keep the anti-stealth capability an option.

Aspects: We only ever use one in combat. Sure, speeding up the corpse run is nice. But do we really need them anymore? I say no.

Concussive Shot: We already have a trap to slow something down. Now that we can launch it, I think this shot can go.

Kill Shot: It's not exactly interesting. When it's up you fire it. Sounds just like our signature shots. I'd suggest baking a sub 20% damage boost into them instead. That way players still get rewarded for performing a correct shot priority.

So that's nine candidates. It wasn't easy to get that many. Did miss any others? Am I crazy to suggest some of these? Tell me how I'm wrong in the comments!

JC