I remember Vanilla hunters

[Darth Belichick]

We didn't even have viper back in my day. End up just sittin there and auto shot for hours.

Exactly. Hunters most defintely ran out of mana. Because hunters were #1 DPS in Sunwell w/ gear (lol 1 button macro to the top of the charts) I had a shadow priest in my group by default so mana wasn't much of an issue. In vanilla, it was Feign Death + Drink. So you didn't do 50% damage, you did no damage for a few seconds.

Seriously, focus >>>>>>>>> mana.

[Rehija]

Hunters who say we had infinite mana and the like didn't raid much

Fel Mana Pots and a Ret Pally say Hi to this comment. I wore 4 pc T6, the craftet chain chest and 3 pc Leather during Sunwell and never had mana issues. My issues were lootwise with War/Hunt/Sham Tokens wich were more rare than the Glaives for my Raid.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Fel Mana Pots and a Ret Pally say Hi to this comment. I wore 4 pc T6, the craftet chain chest and 3 pc Leather during Sunwell and never had mana issues. My issues were lootwise with War/Hunt/Sham Tokens wich were more rare than the Glaives for my Raid.

good ol day of survival sunwell

i remember also the OIL for mana regen..


but nevertheless, focus>mana

[Alvito]

I miss mana, when they changed it I stopped playing hunter. Focus just does not feel right Ive tried over and over to get back into hunters but it never lasts.

A resource that you either had way more then you ever needed or in the very very rare case with poor gear not enough to be effective. There was zero mana management. Focus adds a little thought to what you do. With mana they might as well had no resource.

[Nihilist74]

The 2nd toon I leveled was a hunter during wotlk. Using mana was ok. Had to drink a lot if I used volley a lot. I prefer focus over mana. Focus is like energy for a rogue. I feel like beast mastery and marksmanship was the best it had ever been during wod.

[Deathquoi]

I guess it needs context. It's JonTron's sarcastic remark about platforming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYk1Obt9UGQ&t=10m15s

It's pretty much what I think of when people bring up the "good old days" for hunters, with mana and macros that did your rotation for you.

EDIT: And if anyone thinks I'm exaggerating about the single macro thing, behold:

https://www.worldofcorecraft.com/con...ter-2332-macro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acO_umcI6xQ&t=1m36s

People complain that hunters are too simplistic now, but you LITERALLY spammed 1 button in BC: a castsequence macro for steady shot and auto shot. And steady shot couldn't be cast while moving. So you were pretty much no different from the casters. It is mind boggling how anyone can honestly prefer that style over what we have now.

Yeah the best thing ever is when people are like "ugh the prune has dumbed down classes so much, it was way better in vanilla and BC when classes were more complex"

I want to be like "the fuck you say bitch? You mean when mages literally pressed one button for their main nuke while standing completely still forever? Or when Paladins literally just spammed downranked FoL (because they couldn't tank or DPS of course). Those were the days!

[Rehija]

You mean when mages literally pressed one button for their main nuke while standing completely still forever?

BC Warlocks *coff*

Personally i liked the general "frame" of Classic and BC raiding more than the actual one; Pure and Support Classes. Pures were always better in the raw numbers but only the supporters pushed them over the Top and made some ridiculus things happen. I never looked at the dps meters and i never cared about my personal e-peen, i always played at the best as i could and all that mattered was the end of the raid evening when the Raid leader said; Raid clear, good job.

[melodramocracy]

Mana was kind of silly, though resources are resources, no matter what they're named. A more cleverly designed game would have had hunters consuming / rebuilding it quicker, to basically equate to what focus does now.

The rest of the changes to the class, mostly removing micro-management, have been terrible.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I think mana was ultimiately a good thing for hunters back in the day. do you guys like the change?

I liked how there was different types of ammos. Ultimately I think the design was broken, but the idea of having to carry munitions was great. I think that to have a resource to manage for hunters - beside focus - would be a great thing. Think Warlocks' shards.

[Feanoro]

Mana was either infinite (Judgment of Wisdom, mana pots, Spriests) or you ran out quickly. Actually, it was a pretty good indicator of a wipe if your Hunters ran out, because all the paladins were dead... We're told that infinite resources are a problem, and yet today's casters all have that problem. This is why they're given combo points in the forms of Soul Shards, Arcane Charges, etc. Frankly, seeing how that works, I'd have preferred a similar system.

I like focus the concept, but focus the implementation has ranged from terrible to merely ok, mainly due to the failure to fully think it through and the side effects.

- Our current mobility design yo-yo is a direct result of focus regen being based on a cast-time shot. No mobile cast-time shot = easy starvation in pvp. Fox introduced, trading damage for mobility. Cue the Aspect dancing macros! Shit, that spams the hell out of our servers, make SteadyCobra mobile. Dammit, we forgot we gave them Aimed glyph, make MM shit for two expacs. Ok, make Aimed mobile but give a player-controlled damage reduction (Sniper Training). Yay, we got it right after only five years!

- They've never hit the sweet spot for regen. Thrill (feast or famine), Dire Beast (lol boss moved!), Aimed crit refunds, set bonuses making SteadyCobra regen more... We don't play hunters so much as focus managers. Nothing wrong with that, but it leads to obsession with perfect rotations and timing, which raids and pvp tend to screw up. Our classic utilities (healer defense, kiting, CC, pulling) have no place in this model. Also, hooray this pull is perfect... what do you mean wipe it?! Next pull, fml procs are shit but we're winning.

- You by far cast mostly Focus shots. Because they regen, they hit like wet noodles. Fair enough, right? No, because then your spender shots have to hit harder to compensate. Consequently, we run into "unfair" things like Aimed/Chimera crits being "too big" and we get knee-jerk shot nerfs, and for a while the infamous Hawk buffs.


I can see Legion trying to fix things and move towards a combo point/energy system, but since they don't want a direct copy, it's every bit as awkward as the retarded Cata design:

- MM gets combo points in the form of debuffs which are far more important than focus. Buffs on the player would be better, because we've all seen the roller coaster of making mob debuffs somewhat work. Ultimately, they had to bypass their own system with Sidewinders/Patient Sniper.

- Focus regen spells are all instant and mobile, finally! Of course, feast or famine is REALLY baked in now...


See why I'd have preferred mana with Hunter's Arcane Soul Shards?

[Zulkhan]

Bluntly speaking, I don't miss a single thing of Vanilla Hunters. Well, excluding all those nostalgic issues towards stuff that wasn't "better" or even practical by any stretch.

[Geran]

Mana for hunters was one of the most annoying system there was, no making any sense in terms of class (were hunters a caster class, a physical one, did they need agi as main stat, or did they need spirit? or mechanics (most hunters needed to FD+drink to keep on long combats-> so the changes later to viper aspect).

The change to focus was a good one, in spite of some of the implementation they did (and as of legion......)

[TheImperios]

Remember why they removed mana for hunters. It was because you (well, us, I was a hunter at the time) stole all the loot from other classes.

[Fang7986]

Yes. Having to stack MP5 as a Hunter was tons of fun. Having to FD and drink in the middle of a fight was just so awesome.

This. Mana was fun because you could go all out spamming your powerful abilities, until it ran out, then you were SOL. Honestly vanilla/BC hunters were basically Arcane mages alternating between burn and conserve(Viper) phases.

[Manhands]

If a class has a lengthy regen phase, then the burn phases damage has to be higher to compensate. Otherwise, they aren't worth taking. This makes them harder to balance, and for what? Is the gameplay actually more fun to hit like a wet noodle for stretches of the fight?

Nah, it makes sense they moved away from that model.

[Deleted]

I really enjoyed Hunter back in Vanilla and even more-so in TBC but I think that was in spite of Mana. I raided as our guild's SV hunter. Most raiding guilds had one hunter who would spec SV for the Expose Weakness debuff that was essentially an AP boost to every physical damage dealer.

Essentially, while my memories of that time of the game are very positive I think that has little to do with mana/focus and focus seems to make a lot more sense.

Mana had some major drawbacks for hunters regarding consumables. 2x Mana Oil on dual-wielded weapons (Twin Netherbanes ftw) + 2 Potions (one offensive, one defensive, 30m durations because that outperformed the 2h flasks that persisted through death). Then you had the actual mana potions required to not have to drop into AotV too often. We rarely had a Ret Paladin or Shadow Priest so these were necessary. Glad to be rid of that.

[alex wolf]

I think that focus should have been marksman only and build up over time as you stand still the longer you stand still the faster the regen, with special abilities to increase regen like a self root that doubles focus regen while active and puts you into a crouch, could also increase shot range and the like

[betahunter]

I didn't like the change at first, but grew used to it.

Beast Mastery hunters suffer a lot in Legion, I'm always focus starved, we need other means of regenerating focus. Or make Chimaera Shot baseline...?