My sig shows what now. You know nothing of our roster, maybe you should do your research before spewing false accusations
. We have 3 mages, 1 warlock, 1 shadow priest who's starting his trial with us from next week (AKA zero, for now), 2 boomkins, 1 elemental shaman, and 3 hunters. I'm not recruiting shadow priests/warlocks because they're "overpowered", because they will be balanced. I'm recruiting them because those are the classes we don't HAVE at the moment. If I was recruiting just for OP-ness, you'd see my signature say "mages" too, wouldn't you
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Hunters has a higher mobility than anyone else. You can't dispute that. The only class that gets close are warlocks, but they do so at a severe punishment to their actual movement speed (moving as if they were dazed the entire time), and warlocks have none of the tools hunters have like Disengage, running through ice traps, aoe slow, etc...
Warlocks are also far worse soakers than hunters, which you'd know if you thought about it. The only class that can soak every other set of sparks from rages are a hunter. No other class can do this over the entire fight. In 10 man, where you can easily CC 2 adds then aoe them, hunters can soak every single rage add.
Rogue's can't take more than one spark at a time reliably, as they take damage from them. The reason they survive is feint. This also keeps them from dpsing, as they can't run back and forth between strengths and bosses, due to cleaves, and they won't get in any dances outside of "gas"-phases.
Warlocks can light tiles, yes, but they won't be half as efficient as a hunter at it. Warlocks doesn't break their roots when the Guard gets close to exploding by disengaging, nor do they gain excessive speed boosts through a 25 second CD ability, or have a dash (through symbiosis). They can't damage the guards while out of range, while a BM hunter can.
You're also completly ignorant about empress. What you're saying makes no sense.
Looking at it, it would seem like any yellow hit (special attack) can make the poison fumes trigger, to make it fair for casters. This puts hunters in the same boat as every single other class, and ahead of most (Due to multishot being counted as multiple hits for special attacks).
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7470&e=8311 - this is the log from our empress kill yesterday. Obviously, things such as crits will skewer the damage DONE amount of poison fumes, but take a look at the hits done:
Number one - A combat rogue, at 92, with blade flurry literally doubling every single attack he does.
Number two - A survival hunter, at 85.
Number three - A arcane mage, at 76.
And downwards from there. Hunters have absolutly no disadvantage with the empress buff, but rather, an advantage if they play survival, due to the way AOE works for hunters (multi shots), and Surv mastery - along with the fact that while casters runs with a 1 sec GBC and casts that requires them to get out fewer attacks, hunters are literally throwing instants out all the time, triggering more procs (as evidenced by the log).
As for Garajal, many melee has enough mobility to be better than a BM hunter with the clunky pet downstairs on garalon. Sending a hunter down should never be the go-to if you want to optimise. If a 10 man can't control their roster and have people play multiple classes/specs to help the raid, then they aren't even close to being hardcore enough to not take a hunter.
In any case - you can make absolutly no assumptions about me from my sig, apart from the fact that I'm the raidleader of a top 100 25 man guild, and I have a hunter with 16/16 heroic progress
. Our recruitment status has nothing to do with the state of any classes.
In the end, I'm not denying that hunters aren't in top. What I *AM* denying, is the fact that hunters are "completly useless", and "beat by any other class". You argue that no hunter is to be found in top 10 ranks anywhere, well, there actually is a hunter now on blade lord 10.
On the other hand, there's no windwalker monks, no ret paladins, two elemental shamans and shadow priests, no enhancements to be found anywhere. Hunters aren't top, but we aren't bottom. Hunters are in the middle, and thus we are worth bringing to a raid. If your 10 man guild does not agree, you've got a dumb raid leader.