Friday, January 20, 2012

One With The Beast

In a topic that often comes up when talking about pure DPS classes it is time again to visit the idea of removing the pure from the pure DPS.  It it time to tackle the best class in the game, the hunter, and make them twice as good, or would it be thrice as good?

One With the Beast
100% Focus - 1 minute cooldown
-The Hunter enters a trace and becomes one in mind and body with their currently controlled pet.  While at one with the beast the Hunter can not be controlled or damaged.  During this time the Hunter controls all the beasts actions and should the beast die so will the hunter.

This new ability would be baseline and not tied to any one spec meaning that all specs of hunters would be able to use the one with the beast ability.  The beastmaster hunter spec will however have one additional ability when using one with the beast and that is bestial wrath.

Each pet group would become a different type of pet when joined using the one with the beast ability.

Cunning pets:  Healing abilities.

Ferocity pets:  Melee DPS abilities.

Tenacity pets: Tank abilities.

Being the hunter themselves are a ranged DPS this ability would effectively make hunters of any spec capable of filling any role in the game as needed.  All the three classes of pets would have basic abilities that would allow them to fill their roles competitively but none would have all the "extra" abilities that are usually associated with their roles.

As an example, while the melee version of the hunter using one with the beast would have a 10 second interrupt like all melee classes have it would not have any slows, disarms, burn time cooldowns, or a wide variety of abilities like all other melee classes have.

All three versions of the one with the beast will use focus as their resource, just like hunters do and they would all follow the basic concept of one of their abilities being used to regenerate focus like steady/cobra does.

The three versions would all be somewhat simplified, as to not make hunters have to learn 4 different rotations to play only one class.

Tank pets would have basically 2 taunts, one single target and one multi, 2 direct attacks, one for high threat and damage and one for focus regeneration, and 2 defensive cooldowns, one short and small and one longer and large along with an interrupt.  In addition, all tank pets would have one pet specific cooldown, like the turtles shell shield, the bears regeneration, etc.

Healer pets would have a small fast heal that regenerates focus and is meant to be spammed when not using others. It would then have one instant small heal, one instant HoT, one big heal and one AoE heal and 2 healing cooldowns, one for a channeled big AoE heal and one for a channeled effect to converts focus to mana for all people in the group or raid, which could be used to help support the rest of the group but would also double the healer pets heals for the next 20 seconds after it was used making it useful for both the pet and the raid. In addition, all healer pets would have one pet specific ability like a spider would have a web that webs a friendly target in a shield equal to their total max life, they can do no abilities until the shield is broken or 10 seconds have passed but the shield could be an amazing cooldown for many situations that I could think of.

Melee DPS pets would have an interrupt and four attack abilities. A single target attack that regenerates focus, a large attack that does good damage but is costly, an AoE attack and an execute time attack for the last 30 percent of life. In addition, all melee pets would have one pet specific attack like a cat with berserk or a wolf with a frenzied assault.

For the beast master hunter, being the master of beast as they are, they will keep the beastial wrath ability when they go into one with the beast.  It would keep the same cooldown time and instead of increasing damage done it will change for the current role.  In tank it would increase threat generated and avoidance for its duration, for healing it would increase healing done and add an HoT on the healed target for 10% of each heal during its duration and for melee it would serve the same as it does now.

Keeping the rotations and abilities of each pet simple would make it easier for a hunter to learn how to play all four roles while within one spec, something no other class would have the ability to do.

As agility is the main stat for a hunter all roles would base their needed stats off of that. 

Tanks would have avoidance based off the agility of the hunter for dodge, as pets can not parry or block, like bears all they would have is dodge.  Also like bear tanks, the hunters stamina would have a +30% or so multiplier when in tank form.

For melee DPS they could use agility to attack power just like they do for feral cats and rogues.

For healers, being spirit does not matter as hunter healing does not use mana, their agility would convert to spell power and critical percentage.

The one minute cooldown on the one with the beast ability is to keep people from changing back and forth during battle all the time.  Changing once per minute would be more then ample.  The cost of 100% focus is also there to keep it from being used instantly on the fly.  Hunters regenerate focus fast enough that shouldn't ever be a major problem should they need to switch instantly.  Not to mention, hunters would rarely ever be using a cunning of tenacity pet while DPSing, so in the time it would take them to switch pets it should give them the time they need to get focus capped.

If the concept I have heard being thrown around of removing the DPS classes as a whole would ever come to pass this is how I would like to see it done.  I think if something like this ever did get done it would be a beast master only ability which would be fine I guess but the concept fits with hunters in general and not just beast masters.  It would fit with the hunters way of life, of joining and becoming one with their pet.  How much more of becoming one with your pet could you ever get then being one with the beast?

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