R.I.P. Bear Trap, 40-second Bestial Wrath, and 7-second Disengage

Well, that didn’t last very long.

@Coldfire989 A) That was before passives that reduced it to 2min. B) We decided not to add Bear Trap after all. Not needed without Readiness

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) June 5, 2014

R.I.P. Bear Trap, for the second time (it was originally slated to be added in Wrath before being removed in that beta).  It sounds like there isn’t going to be a replacement either. When Celestalon says it’s “not needed without Readiness” I think he means one of the reasons they added Bear Trap in the first place was so Survival would have a DPS cooldown affected by the stat. However, now that Readiness is kaput, they feel like there’s no need for it.

@JVel2 @Coldfire989 No, we don’t think they need any more complication. Rather have one fewer button. — Celestalon (@Celestalon) June 5, 2014

I’ll admit the idea of Bear Trap as a cooldown wasn’t the most elegant solution to the problem, but I was looking forward to having a DPS cooldown button to push in comparison to Bestial Wrath for BM and Rapid Fire for MM. It seems like Survival is going to have to rely more on RNG for any burst capability.

Stat Changes

Removing Readiness is probably healthy for the game, but I am going to really miss those 40-second Bestial Wraths, and especially those 7-second Disengages. I assume Assurance of Consequence will still scale down as you level in some way. This was originally going to be accomplished by changing it to Readiness rating, but maybe now they’ll just reduce the CDR by X% every level until it’s 0% at level 100.

I’m still a bit excited for Multistrike, if only because it will now work with pets. Multistrike Kill Commands? Yes, please. It also sounds like when an attack Multistrikes, it will physically fire off another shot. I’m pretty sure Haromm’s Talisman doesn’t do that right now, and it simply procs extra damage. So that could look pretty cool as well. Multistrike Glaive Toss?

All of the tweets I’m getting regarding Versatility: “Are you crazy? It’ll be [avoided like the plague]/[mandatory for its survivability].”

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) June 5, 2014

Versatility is the new stat in town, and my initial reaction was a big fat “meh” until I started thinking about it. Each 1% of Versatility you get will increase your damage and healing by 1%, and reduce the damage you take by 0.5%. Now, assuming this stat will stack to meaningful percentages, it could actually be very useful to a hunter. It means your Spirit Bond and Mend Pet will be healing for more, which means Spirit Bond could actually compete better with Iron Hawk in a raid environment. I needn’t mention the extreme soloing possibilities with having more self-healing and damage reduction.

A survival stat for a pure DPS class would normally be undesired, but the fact that it increases DPS at the same time means we’ll still want it on our gear. There’s a lot of talk around the interwebs about the stat being unbalanced. Many think it will either be too powerful, or completely useless. Celestalon assures us they’re going to tune it properly. It shouldn’t give more DPS than the pure DPS stats (since it also gives survivability), but it also won’t be tuned where you groan every time you get it on a piece of gear. And don’t forget that a dead DPS does zero DPS!

Looking forward to seeing all this in action, when (and if) I ever get invited to beta.

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