Looking over the Warrior class preview for Cataclysm, I noticed an interesting bit that suggests hunters may be losing their mortal strike.
- Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players’ health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren’t considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.
It’s obviously way too soon to predict what sort of effect this will have in PvP, but it’s still noteworthy nonetheless. It appears as if healing will be a little less overpowered in Cataclysm. From a PvP standpoint, I think healers are a little imbalanced right now, so this looks to be a good change.
As a hunter, this talent looks a little scary…
- The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.
Nothing like eating a Disarm for 5-10 seconds while getting your face smashed in by a Warrior. 😯
Oh man… I can’t wait to see what they have in store for hunters. Is it tomorrow yet..? 😉
Ghostcrawler responded to this concern further in the thread:
“All equivalent debuffs” means if you have the debuff today, you will have it in Cataclysm, but at 20% healing received. To avoid further confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast.
We are also strongly considering having all of these effect cause the same debuff, called Mortal Wounds, which is a physical effect and therefore undispellable. This allows the behavior to be more consistent regardless of who is applying it and lets us consider things like how easy it should be to dispel poisons (since Mortal Wounds would not be affected).
Heals will be smaller and health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, so we don’t expect Mortal Wounds to feel as mandatory as it does today, but this is clearly the kind of thing that will require a lot of playtesting and feedback.
You know what… given the insane amount of changes to Hunter’s class… I could even come back for some action when Cata will hit the stores. Nothing like starting a fresh toon (human!): that would be the best way to enjoy the new stuff for sure (more than merely leveling 80-85 I mean).
I could not do anythinbg else anyway… as I deleted ALL my stuff, toons included 🙂
Damn I’ts so good I can read your blog and feel “good”, without any kind of “addiction” feeling I had for months, some time ago!
Hi Dalaila,
You know what they say… the journey is half the fun. leveling in Cataclysm will be a whole new experience anyway, so it’ll be a good time for a fresh start. A human hunter would’ve been my first choice back in vanilla, but I dunno… Worgen hunters are going to be pretty awesome.
Some exciting stuff on the horizon for hunters. 😀
Good hearing from you!
I too am spinning my wheels thinking about tomorrow- I really hope we don’t lose our MS. I don’t PvP much at all, but as far as I understand it, that’s the most important thing we can do in 5s.
Yep. That and run around like a rodeo clown. 😉
I read the warrior comments differently. I figure they didn’t mention Aimed Shot and Wound poison specifically, but that they will follow MS and become 20% reductions. Highly doubt that the omission of them from warrior comments means that they’ll be gone.
I’m hoping that’s the case. My initial interpretation of the post was that only 3 classes were going to possess a mortal strike, but then I read it again and saw it differently. The statement doesn’t exclude hunters, yet it doesn’t include them either.
My guess is hunters will likely retain their MS, but we’ll probably know more on that tomorrow.