Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Hunter

Forums

Skills

Talent Calculator

Artifact Calculator

PvP Talent Calculator

Rogue

Forums

Skills

Talent Calculator

Artifact Calculator

PvP Talent Calculator

Warlock

Forums

Skills

Talent Calculator

Artifact Calculator

PvP Talent Calculator

We definitely understand that Marksmanship Hunters were used to a version of Vulnerable on live that was, for all practical purposes, full uptime (i.e. it could be up for every or virtually every Aimed Shot). Skilled players will still be able to have a great majority of their Aimed Shots affected by Vulnerable even in 7.1.5, albeit with a higher demand on focus management and good use of Windburst. That is intended, even if it involves losing a degree of comfort in essentially never being without a Vulnerable when you want it. The debuff is less diluted and has more significance when it requires that sort of attention, and it is not without payoff: the damage of an Aimed Shot with Vulnerable is significantly higher than in 7.1, and can be further increased with the new Patient Sniper. The ability to use Piercing Shot with Vulnerable (and potentially Patient Sniper) is an example of a new option allowing a very strong burst.While the fundamental mechanic driving it is a proc, the proc rate is quite high, and our goal is to make sure it is the sort of randomness that provides variation to a rotation while allowing responsive gameplay and room for mastery. The ability to wait on a Hunter's Mark while pooling focus to get full value from the Vulnerable will be more important than before. Windburst, as well as the talent options Sidewinders and Sentinel, allow on-demand Vulnerables as a resource to deal with situations where you have focus but not a Mark (or simply to make sure you have one for a key burst moment without having to react to a proc). Finally, removing the Vulnerable requirement for Marked Shot to do strong damage removes a reliance on multiple rapid procs and/or Sidewinders in order to use consistent buffed Marked Shots.As the PTR goes on, we welcome feedback on what problems turn up when you try to put this into practice, but I wanted to explain a bit more what our expectation was. ( Blue Tracker It does.To say a bit more on the 7.1.5 changes to various “cheat death” effects, including Cheat Death, Cauterize, Purgatory, and Last Resort: firstly, the cooldown increase is not the only change—the cooldowns (specifically, the cooldown-enforcing debuffs) will now clear on death. So if you Cheat Death early in a dungeon, yes, you should avoid dying again for the next 6 minutes. However, in the event you do die (or the group wipes), you will return to combat with Cheat Death once again available.More broadly, we examined the value of these effects as a whole and concluded they are too easily available. When Cheat Death was first added as a deep Subtlety talent (before the change to modern talent rows), its power and cooldown reflected the significant investment into that tree. In the current game, not only is its opportunity cost much lower, but, taking a look at the gameplay of healing and survivability challenges, the power level of such a frequent extra life is very high. For example, Rebirth has a 10 minute cooldown, and is a distinctively powerful ability that significantly contributes to a class’s perceived power in dungeons. Reincarnation has a 30 minute cooldown, and is far from being meaningless or forgotten. If we were adding Cheat Death and its ilk today and evaluating its power, there would be little justification for a cooldown as short as 2 minutes. Preventing a death that might otherwise have scuttled the entire current attempt at a dungeon or raid boss has more value than that.On Last Resort in particular, we are aware that Vengeance Demon Hunters felt somewhat reliant on this to avoid deaths to unexpected burst damage, and we will be monitoring whether they need other changes to compensate (for example, they have increased health on PTR, increased baseline damage reduction, and a stronger Metamorphosis effect). And on Purgatory, its cooldown was increased the least because it conditional, and it was also made more reliable: the effect will now always last for 3 seconds regardless of whether you momentarily go above 0 HP during that window. ( Blue Tracker One problem that Destruction Warlock had was a number of talent rows with very obvious "single-target" vs. "AoE" talent picks. This has clear downsides--a requirement to swap talents often (and as a corollary, a feeling of being significantly crippled when not using the ideal talent loadout for a given situation). Clearly, it's a DPS loss single-target to say you can no longer have both Eradication and Reverse Entropy, and a DPS loss in some AoE situations to say you can no longer have both Cataclysm and Fire and Brimstone. But making that swap, and then making sure throughout PTR that Destruction DPS remains reasonably consistent with live, will leave the spec more well-rounded and not as pigeonholed by talent choices in a given situation. PTR already has buffs to Doomguard and Imp damage that help with numbers in all situations, as well as buffs to various talents to help futher improve flexibility. ( Blue Tracker