Are the new hunter specs fun?

[threads]

You mean on live wow or on the beta? None will really be fun they all depend on their artifact heavily. Especially survival. BM is really fun for me at 110 but mm is still really strong now. If you played them before you'll like them at 110.

i don't get why everyone says this. i tried them all at 110 and you get an ability and a few buffs from the artifact but it's still mostly the same. if you think it's aids now it's probably still aids at 110.

[Darkeon]

Changed to an hunter in TBC and hadn't changed since; Time to dust up the good ol' druid.

[desert-wind]

Just a warning to everyone judging MM based on pre patch... When the expansion launches and you lose 4 set, the spec will probably feel better and make more sense. Instant Aimed en mass adds in a lot of downtime to the spec and all but remove any skill to playing it.

[krunksmash]

As a beta and 12 year hunter player, I will break down how I feel about each spec.

Marksman: This spec just feels clunky, the direction was on track but the execution is bad. the long running Issue of it being far too RNG dependent is not fixed and is actually worse due to how the RPPM system works with triggering marked shots. Aimed shot feels weak for a 50 focus cast attack, and arcane shot does not give enough focus for the cost of your attacks. the spec also feels very fragile.

This said MM does bring a good tool kit to the table in its massive burst phases. but honestly this is the only saving grace I see about this spec. as MM has always been my person favorite spec this really is a let down for me.

Beast Mastery: This spec works but just feels boring you literally have 3 attacks and limited options for enhancing the rotation. you use Dire beast and kill command on cooldown and cobra shot to avoid focus capping. you have a couple CD's but the core game play is simple. Now while Simple its damage is respectable and it has ok burst. it is a bit crippled by fights that require a lot of target swamping but can manage. While Bm does not instill the sense of a master of beast that attacks by controlling his or her own pack its still a viable option.

Survival: This Spec just feels right. Its the perfect blend of Pet, Tech and classic stab it to death game play. Having a pet follow you instills that sense of relying on each other to survive the wilds this is enhanced with the flanking strikes attack that has you and your pet attack together. traps and grenades feel like they fit and give the spec a unique identity. finally your two core attacks interact well together Mongoose bite grants a damage buff called mongoose fury, this stacking timed buff increases the damage of mongoose bite BUT it also increases the damage of Fury of the Eagle, a new attack our Artifact gives. this interaction feels fun and rewarding and nothing is more fun than unloading a 6 stack FotE with 30% extra damage from our CD into a target. Talent options for this spec are massive. allowing for great leway in play style, something the other two specs lack. All of this combines to create a spec with strong single target and AoE but that also has insane burst.

All this said Survival is not with out its flaws as with MM Survival feels fragile, you can quickly rip threat off your pet which is also fragile in its own right. your healing is dependent on killing a target which make Exhilarate your only oh damn heal on a 3 min CD; However, even with this flaw SrV has the damage to muscle your way out of most situations, and being that traps are exclusive to SrV if you do get in a stick use freezing trap and run.


Over all I think:

MM Didn'y really fix the RNG issue but rather made it worse and the new play style is overly complicated by this RNG issue making the spec weak and just not fun.

Bm is in a respectable spot but its overly simple and falls a bit short of fulfilling the Beast Master Theme.

SrV feels great, the damage is great, the talent options are vast, the attacks make sense and fit the theme. its only issue is their actual survival.

[threads]

Just a warning to everyone judging MM based on pre patch... When the expansion launches and you lose 4 set, the spec will probably feel better and make more sense. Instant Aimed en mass adds in a lot of downtime to the spec and all but remove any skill to playing it.

yea i'm sure everyone complaining now is gonna have shit ton of fun losing their mobility with casted aimed shot lol

[Gurg]

Newish hunter here, leveled a Hunter a month or so ago so i dont have some extended knowledge or gameplay experience to back me up as the rest of the guys here do.
That might be bad, or might be good for you as im posting somewhat "default" since i have little game time on me and you were on a break.

Survival - It went melee. For most ppl here its a bad choice by default because its a melee and they rolled hunter because.. well its NOT a melee class. Of all three specs, the one i had most fun trough PTR and since 7.0 is down on live. Its rotation is somewhat lookalike to Cata Fury warriors and Colossus Smash window that they had. If you want you can go heavy DoT build, if specced right Survival ends up having MORE dots than Afli lock so there are things to manage if youre into that kind of gameplay. I personally think that full dot build is a but overkill due to being melee. I like excitement in my life, but not as much so i choose to keep it somewhere middle-to-easy, after all its a melee spec now and theres a rotation to keep up and stuff to look out from.
Rotation: Pool Mongoose Bite charges up to 2.3, Refresh your DoTs, by that time your 3rd charge of Mongoose Bite should be almost up, start dumping you Mongoose Bites on target which will give you Mongoose Fury buff, 12s fixed duration stacking 6times that increases damage of next Mongoose Bite by 50%, Fury of the Eagle which increases you chance by 100% (doubles your chance) to get Mongoose Bite stacks per special attack to burn in that 12s window. Focus dump is done via Flanking Strike or Raptor strike which both have the chance to give you stack of Mongoose Bite via mastery. Both can be augmented via lvl 15 talents so its down to your choice, do you like more spammy rotation with a extra buff to manage or slower rotation with guaranteed chance to get randomly one of three buffs. Three buffs of which is only one actually usable.

Beast Mastery - First of all, if you decide to go BM turn OFF your sound effects! Amount of whistles that i heard on first trash pack in HFC was countless time bigger than i heard in my whole RL. My Mom and Dad knew how to whistle extremely loud and they used to whistle when i was out but i messed up something at home. And i was extremely bad child so.. there was a lot of whistling in my RL. And MMs have them more, on first trash pull.
Someone here said.. Just go iddle and whistle at the mobs. Ill add, make camping fire too. Its literally 3 button rotation, 4th is Multishot for AoE and no matter what you do you cant make rotation at least semi interestingly complex, not fun, complex. It plays out like Cata-MoP retri Pala. Something on your bar of those 3 buttons lights up or its not on cooldown - push it. And thats it. Really. Not joking.
Fun Idea: I wouldnt be surprised if someone made an addon that replaces Dire Beast's (Call Pet's too pleaaaseee) whistle sound with.. pretty much ton of random funny stuff, like Arnolds: GET TO THE CHOPPA! ILL BE BAK! PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN NOW!

Marksman - Havent played it much, so im unable to be objective here, but ill try it. After playing BM for half a day i switched to MM just to give it a go. Simply put. I had no idea what im doing or suppose to do! Theres two types of marks, one spreads other, Shoots bouncing off between marked targets.. In short, its was a nutshell, but it looked cool, really cool. After some time i got a hang of it and it looked good too and the numbers were there also, but mobility not so much.
It literally feels like a sniper, slow expensive-ish cast that hit like a truck. I like it! Atleast more than BM for sure, but on pair with survival.

So, clearly and only by "Fun Factor" my personal choice would be:
Survival, Marksman, Beast mastery.

BUT (and theres always that but that butts in)

Im concerned that in Gameplay Mechanicaly BM would beat them all and be go-to choice for "progressions," aka "learning new fights" even if ends up as worst DPS Hunter spec of all three simply because.. why would anyone with sane mind mash buttons in melee as Survival, or hope that RNG Gods will RNG him as Marksman when you can just be iddle, by your campfire that you made before boss pull, shouting nonsense stuff at boss due to addon that someone made that replaces your damn whistle sound?

[Hibiki]

I wonder what a total retard decided remove spirit bond. It's not op at all, mostly good for solo, leveling and old raid content. Spirit bond is very weak for pvp and raids so WHY they removed it? That hurts hunter ability to do some hardcore solo actions and nothing more. Just pure bullshit fun remover. Now even if you got spirit beast type pet you lacking heals during leveling, and casting mend pet not helps much. That is so retarded change, and all micromanagement of this crap is simply terrible.

[Ballistic]

I wonder what a total retard decided remove spirit bond. It's not op at all, mostly good for solo, leveling and old raid content. Spirit bond is very weak for pvp and raids so WHY they removed it? That hurts hunter ability to do some hardcore solo actions and nothing more. Just pure bullshit fun remover. Now even if you got spirit beast type pet you lacking heals during leveling, and casting mend pet not helps much. That is so retarded change, and all micromanagement of this crap is simply terrible.

Actually whoever was on charge of redesigning legion hunter is complete retard. We had an issue every expansion but it gets sorted out eventually but this current stat of hunters I don't know from where to begin fixing.

[dippinsawse]

The new SV is a cool, solid spec. Its nice to get to use my old weapons again that have been stored in my bank for forever. The only thing the spec is lacking is a moment of greatness that interrupts your regular rotation.

I am not very happy with the other two specs to be honest. Overall i would say hunter is functional, but not exciting to play.

I think your artifact ability fits that purpose, it's sort of like the icing on the cake to your mongoose bite chain. You build mongoose fury and then finish with an ability that is sort of like WW monk's fist of fury (though even MORE damage, surprisingly).

[Polanco]

I am having a lot of fun playing SV. TriedB BM, cause thats what I always played, but there was a lot of down time. SV is very different, never been into melee classes, but I like the melee/pet combo.

[Gurg]

I am having a lot of fun playing SV. TriedB BM, cause thats what I always played, but there was a lot of down time. SV is very different, never been into melee classes, but I like the melee/pet combo.

Completely agree with you, even so our interaction with pet is minimal and pet counts only as part of our ST damage (it has no AoE attacks at all) and our offtank i enjoy it quite a lot.

I think your artifact ability fits that purpose, it's sort of like the icing on the cake to your mongoose bite chain. You build mongoose fury and then finish with an ability that is sort of like WW monk's fist of fury (though even MORE damage, surprisingly).

Even more damage - yes. But at cost of being stationary as its channeled skill, interruptable by most forms of CC and when moving.

[Miggy]

Even more damage - yes. But at cost of being stationary as its channeled skill, interruptable by most forms of CC and when moving.

It's now castable while moving, it was changed maybe a month or so ago on the beta.

[Deleted]

I think that survival is actually the best spec for hunter currently, which is ironic given its a melee one.

Sure some people might hate this new melee spec but for me who enjoyed the vanilla hunter with some decent melee abilities and survival I'm glad to have a spec that gives back a little bit of this hybrid feeling.

Survival offers plenty of different playstyles whether you want to focus on dots, burst, AOE and the talent tree is wayyyy more interesting than MM or BM.
I love having grenades, knocking people off, summoning a spitting snake (such a random but exotic choice) and fighting just alongside your pet. This makes me believe that BM should have been the melee spec given that you are actually fighting just next to your pet instead of commanding him to die in your stead.

I haven't tried BM yet, doesn't look that different but MM is okay. Not great, but since I hated the MM rotation since cataclysm and the steady shot spam, I cannot say that this is worse, its actually more dynamic but still spammy.

[Gurg]

It's now castable while moving, it was changed maybe a month or so ago on the beta.

If thats correct, all my life issues just got resolved in a day

[Vikoloco]

Hunters are no longer fun to play, i have 3 lvl 100 hunters and i don't enjoy playing them anymore. And i DON'T CARE if this is a Pre-Patch and the game is missing arctifacts and traits and whaterver, i pay for the game i expect it to be complete, why do they even have a Beta, Alpha, PTR if they're going to deliver this ? put your game together first blizzard, give us the arctifact NOW if we're "missing spells".
About the class right now:
• SV is a melee class, I personally don't like melee clasess unless i'm tanking, so i'm not even going to touch that one. I'm a hunter, not a rogue/warrior/druid i want to attack from a certain distance.
• BM is boring as F*ck. I have to wait like 4 seconds between attacks, i feel useless most of the time, the pet does everything. Is not fun for me.
• MM is... is broken, yes it hits hard and does a lot of dmg if used correcly, but is a 4 button class and if you don't have the Tier (Bonus 4: insta-aimedshot) is just terrible. you're casting for like 3 seconds while your target vulnerability only lasts 6 seconds (with patient sniper) it's a waste if L'n'L doesn't proc. Marked shot feels really slow, even tho it's a fantastic skill: hiting every marked target it's brutal in AoE.
the new Aspect of the Cheetah is gargabe, the CD is way to long for it to feel useful, not even with dash it improves.
Aspect of the Turtle looks cool but it's just a SINGLE deterrance with different animation and NO spell reflect.
Explosive Shot: try using it with 250MS (Latin America) in a raid, when a million things are happening at the same time and get its full potential: not worth it.
Sentinel is really interesting for AoE situations: i think it shouldn't be a talent but a baseline skill.
Bursting Shot, looks great for pvp... and this has a legendary it can be combined with, why?
Why do our legendary heal us ? why not giving us a murder of crows to suddenly attack our target or a Bleed (Old Piercing shot DoT)
Trueshot: Haste 40% (and marked targets 100%) why Haste ? why not attack power ? Matery ? Critical Strike ?
The New Mastery is pretty damn good, i'd only add more range based on how much you have like it did before but it's fine.
The New Piercing Shot is Orgasmic.

to end the complain/critique/opinion. MM: is good if you have bonus 4. BM: is boring. SV: Melee, so.. BIG NOPE for me.

[Quazoo]

Obviously this is all opinionated, just because someone doesn't like a certain spec, doesn't mean you won't like it too. Other's feedback always helps you get an idea of the spec, but its better to try it out for yourself!

However, here's my feedback. I have been playing Survival and I find it rather fun actually, despite what other people have said about it. Of course its completely different than the other two specs because its melee. I do like the melee playstype better due to being able to basically be fully mobile as opposed to standing and casting. The playstyle isnt really all about just mashing everything on cooldown. Its more about making sure you use your big hitting move, Mongoose Strike, in quick succession. Its probably a pretty quick learning curve, so maybe in the future it will start to feel dull. If you're into melee you might like it!

Good luck fellow adventurer!

[aysatsana]

Hunter has always been my main, I absolutely hate the current state. MM and BM just feel broken, wayyy worse than before. They removed spells for the sake of removing them, and now we're left with almost nothing to press. We are missing a lot of key control abilities (fun abilities) especially for pvp/bgs etc. Survival is probably the only somewhat fun spec right now for me, but it's a melee spec so I don't really like that. Unfortunately I've invested too much time in this 1 character so I don't see myself switching mains, that's just the way I play personally. I'll have to deal with this shit. I miss being able to kit around, throw traps (explosive trap knockback was one of my favs), using masters call, etc. There's literally nothing to do in these specs, fucking awful.

[sandshrew64]

I;ve played a lot of BM.. great spec - heaps of fun.

MM is definately a little bit broken atm, hopefully it gets fixed soon

[lolstorm]

Basically what most people have said here:
BM needs a filler ability. Downtime ain't fun to me.
MM is too RNG dependant and without the 4p set bonus it's very meh.
SV is melee.. I've tried it but I just can't stand melee. Heard it's the better of the 3 specs design wise tho.

[JoNxJoN]

Been playing a hunter for about 9 years now and I've never disliked it as much as I do now. I feel lost without my traps in BM and MM and I'm too stubborn to play a dumb melee hunter.