Monday, April 27, 2009

The GCD is a fickle friend

With 3.1, they took Silencing Shot off the GCD. I enjoy this change - it makes interrupting a breeze on bosses, and it is nice getting that one more shot in there when I am running away from void zones/AoE/death without screwing up my shot priority. Oh, and I'm sure it's nice for PvP, too.

But now that I have a taste of something off the GCD, I realize now how much I'd rather have other things off the GCD, most notably Hunter's Mark.

Pre-3.1, one of our SV Hunters was glyphed for Hunter's Mark, only because there were few relatively great major glyphs for SV. It took off some of the burden for me, since the spell was vital to my DPS, but that way I wouldn't have to worry about it not being up. But with the lovely new glyphs with 3.1, the only Hunter with strong incentive to make sure every single target is marked is yours truly.

Obviously I can't Mark every single add. Razorscale this would be impossible, save for the Big Whirlwind Guys and the Annoying Chain Lightning Guys. I try to not Mark mobs that theoretically should go down in less than ~10 seconds. But for fights like the Cat-Bitch, not only do her adds need top DPS, the cycle of changing DPS targets throughout the fight means the Hunter's Mark has to be switched as well. (This is the top reason why XT is annoying to me.) This is anywhere from six to ten instances where my GCD is lost to Hunter's Mark.

I am tempted to introduce a new concept to the raiding Hunter's environment - The Hunter's Mark rotation. Each mob has a Hunter assigned to it to Mark it. This has some complications, mainly just getting such a novel concept through, but also the fact that it only majorly benefits one person. Not only is it rather selfish to assign the other Hunters the role of buffing me, but it is a habit that is not exactly fundamental to our class. How well will they remember to do something that they don't gain as much benefit from? How many seconds do I allow them to remember to Mark before I Mark it myself, as I have begun to do automatically after switching to a target?

These fears stem from the BC-concept of "Hunters are a DPS class only. Period." There were many arguments on the official forums about the role of Hunters in raids, and the predominant stance of the BM-bastards was that a Hunter had only one purpose: To crank out as much DPS as possible. Buffing the raid was a by-product of that DPS. If you went SV for Expose Weakness, raiding Hunters said that you were "taking the hit" for the raid, as if doing less DPS but buffing your fellow physical DPS was a sacrifice. So while I know our raiders do what is asked of them because that is what is required of raiders, it is a heavy concern that I place my DPS in the hot-keys of another.

It's either this, or I spam the offical forums asking them to remove Hunter's Mark from the GCD. Oh, wait....



"We just can't do eet! The servers don't have da powa'!"

-_-

4 comments:

Zalenna said...

that sounds like a good idea , i might have to run that by my raiding guild , well cause there are 5 of us in the 25man raid , each with different specs , and some of us with dual specs
Hunter Attack squad (like i call it )
an organized Ranged attack unit with raging pets ..GO for Justice ..lol

Negathle said...

Wow... a fifth of your raid is hunters on a regular basis? Damn.. That's nice that you have all three specs represented - I miss that.

Zalenna said...

yea , but we have three main hunters for the three specs
I am the BM hunter , unless there is a pet unfrinedly fight , then i switch to my MM dual spec / that has trap talents
Then we have a Officer who is MM , and then we have a set SV hunter .
Us three have set raid spots . and the other 2 are a MM and SV .
Theirr raid nights are sometimes cut short and replaced , but during that moment, 5 hunters is beastly. Me , the MMhunter and SVhunter have been in the guild the longest out of the other 2 so we know what to expect out of the raids . Their is to many of us , and plus one cause we have another BMhunter wanting to join raiding too , but that is goin a little over board

Torgall said...

I'm used to marking everything since it's tied to my pet attack macro. Old habit from the days when I specced into IHM, and from soloing.

While we're at it, can we put Misdirect off the GDC too. Stick Kill back off there as well. I really miss my instant Kill + Chimera, my fingers still shoot them simultaneously from muscle memory. ;)