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WoD Beta: Celestalon on the Forums

On the Beta Forums, we got a fairly lengthy reply from Celestalon, announcing some upcoming talent changes. This doesn't really address much of what was being discussed in the forum thread, but it at least lets hunters know that a developer has been to that thread; so it's a start.

General Explanations, MM and SV:
"Now then... Yes, the Marksmanship and Survival rotations are simpler than they were before. The goal is to have a simpler baseline rotation, and have meaningful choices that allow you to layer more depth onto that in talents, if you choose. 
"Hunters have a ton of talents which grant rotational or short CD abilities, to support this design. However, they were lacking in rotational depth. The gameplay of most of them boiled down to 'use on cooldown'. No need to think about preparing for when you're going to use it, or how it interacts with your rotation, etc. So, we're going to make some tweaks to try to add some rotational depth to several of the talent choices."

Barrage:
"Barrage is being changed to make it more rotational, with Focus-pooling gameplay required to min/max its benefit. You'll want to pool 60 Focus in anticipation of it coming off cooldown.

"Barrage now has a 20sec CD (down from 30sec), costs 60 Focus (up from 30 Focus), and deals 100% additional damage."

Thoughts:
Interesting.  As Esoth mentioned on twitter:
If the goal is to make sure it's not just "used on CD" then boosting it to a 60 focus cost will do the trick. Without actually trying the change (they aren't in the beta yet) I can't really say, but just guessing, it sounds like it will work a bit better with MM, since SV tends to be a little rough on focus (and has a 20 focus lower cap to begin with).  Also, Rapid Fire has always worked well with Barrage, speeding up that channel so much.

If there's some way to make it work with the focus, dropping the cd to 20 sec will definitely make it a much more worthwhile AoE option, especially for

A Murder Of Crows:
"Murder of Crows had a cooldown-shortening effect that hardly mattered in practice; either the fight would likely be over within 1min if used on a low-healh boss, or you'd likely waste most of the damage of the crows if used on a low-health add. Instead, we're changing that mechanic, so that it's primarily useful on those low-health adds. You'll want to time it well to finish off low health targets, while still being as Focus-efficient as possible.
"Murder of Crows has been changed. Its duration, cost, and cooldown have been reduced by 50%. It no longer has a shorter cooldown when used on low health targets. Instead, its cooldown is reset if the target dies."

Thoughts:
Sounds good.  Makes it less of a major CD, so will be used in very different situations than Stampede.  As it was, the execute function on AMoC was only really used in very unique situations, like currently, Garrosh.

Fervor:
"The gameplay of Fervor and Dire Beast were extremely similar, so we opted to replace Fervor completely. It's rather late in the development process to be doing that, so went with something tried and true: Steady Focus. This iteration of Steady Focus purely increases Focus regeneration, and has a duration short enough to add depth." 
"Fervor has been replaced with Steady Focus: Using Cobra Shot or Steady Shot twice in a row, or using Focusing Shot, increases your Focus Regeneration by 50% for 10 sec."

Thoughts:
This is quite the change. I liked fervor better than Dire Beast, so I'm not super excited to see it go, but Dire Beast does look cool, so there's that. Steady Focus without Ranged Attack Speed buff won't be as enticing for MM, but for SV, with the current state of SV, having a constant stream of extra focus will be great.

Regarding the choice between Fervor and DB, Celestalon later tweeted:


*UPDATE*
Lock and Load:
"Oh, completely forgot that another relevant change hasn't made it into one of your builds yet. Apologies. 
"Lock and Load is returning to the previous version of it, and Multistrikes will simply do more damage for Survival instead."

Thoughts:
I didn't hate the MS LnL function as much as others did.  However, it didn't feel any different to me.  I mean, it didn't feel like we'd gained anything, it was just different for difference's sake. No word yet what this will do to our Stat Attunement.  

Others, however, are more excited to see the old system come back:

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