Survival Takes a Hit – Explosive Shot Nerf Heard Around The Nether

As many of you know GC recently announced that there has been a change.  This was made after the Hunter Community noticed a “Stealth Nerf” to Explosive Shot (souce)

Many such as BRK, and at last count about 22 pages of posts decrying how unjust and wrong this was.   BRK even goes as far as stating how GC must “Truly Hate Hunters“.

I won’t go that far, but I do think that this recent change does nothing but hurt what little credibility GC had gained with the Hunter Community.  Other than that, I’ll try to remain objective and present what’s going on and my take on the recent change and upcoming changes.

Anyways, Ghostcrawler tried to respond to the many outcries and questions regarding a “Stealth Nerf” to Explosive Shot by saying (source) -

“We made a hotfix recently to lower the coefficient of Explosive Shot. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to announce the change ahead of time. We don’t typically do patch notes for hotfixes so we don’t have a system in place to always broadcast these before they happen.

We are in the process of making some changes to get damage done more in parity (in PvP and PvE). If there are other classes far ahead of you on the damage meters, chances are good they will see some nerfs to their damage soon too.

Overall, we are trying to make changes in a more timely manner so that players won’t feel like they are stuck with a bug or other issue forever. We won’t be able to get every issue fixed overnight, but it’s a start. “

Before commenting on this too much, we can’t say that we didn’t know changes to the SV tree and Explosive Shot wasn’t on the horizon.  Recently we even wrote about how GC admitted their mistakes and that changes were coming.  But I’m sure, you were expecting the same time frame as myself, that these would all be a part of 3.1 Ulduar and not sooner.

I mean, GC just recently said

“We talked about it a great deal today and agreed that we probably over-nerfed BM. Marks is in a good  spot and Survival might be too high once we look at the changes we are making to all other classes.”

I think we were all so caught up on the BM nerf that we missed the little tidbit at the end where GC says “Survival might be too high..” Now granted, GC does end that sentence stating that once they look at the changes they’re making to “all other classes.”

Could it be that there were more changes in that hotfix to other classes that we just don’t know about? If so, I’m sure we’ll find out as those classes begin to either cry out or rejoice about their received changes.

Anyways, back to this change. Why now? What happened?

Well, as for why now?  I personally can’t answer that.   Neither does GC really give us any answer on it other than two small comments -

We are in the process of making some changes to get damage done more in parity (in PvP and PvE).

…

Overall, we are trying to make changes in a more timely manner so that players won’t feel like they are stuck with a bug or other issue forever.

So,  by looking at these, it seems that they are admitting that the recent changes to Survival that allowed them to climb to the top of the damage meters relying on Explosive Shot was a bug.  Hmm… a bug eh?

Well, okay, let’s go with that one for a bit.  So whatever the coefficient that was used for Explosive Shot was a typo in the 3.08 patch and they had to go back and fix it. 

Not only that, they’re doing this “in a more timely manner” hmm.. okay.. I guess I’ll have to live with that one. A bit dubious but alright.

 But honestly?  I think it is more likely that this might be part of the overall class balancing act that they are trying to achieve. By slipping in a hotfix change reducing the coefficient on Explosive Shot, it allows a small band-aid for the overly nerfed BM Hunters to at least compete a bit. 

 Also, it helps the MM Hunters that have been either switching out or caught up in the SV frenzy to maintain their raid spots without having to justify not changing.

I don’t say I agree with the change, I only state that I can see a logic behind it. Now whether this logic is correct or not? If GC and the Dev team can truly balance out all three trees while allowing Hunters to be

“A Ranged Fighter with a Pet. Their job is to remain at a distance and with the help of their pet provide high amounts of damage, while helping to maintain agro and mob control.”