Hunters Are So Bad, Preach's Guild Had to Bench Their Hunters

[Madwolf]

Hunter are a bit low right now and that's why they are receiving very strong buff in the next reset... It's their choice to leave hunter behind for a kill but that far into the progress i don't think any class is so far behind it need to be benched to kill the boss... Many guild have cleared or recleared this week with hunter in there group.

Also preach is not the voice of truth.

Finally yes survival is behind and prty shitty to play but I don't think blizzard as given up.. they might just not know exactly how to fix it yet.

Players are angry at the state of the 3 Hunter specs because this was Blizzard's design choice headed into Legion. They wanted to make each spec play more unique to it's class lore, and be fun again while fulfilling their role. Throughout this process they have had tons and tons of input from the Hunter player base on what was working and what wasn't with each spec, and they didn't listen or communicate with the Hunter community at all during these changes.

Beast Mastery Hunter's are upset because they feel as if their specialization is incomplete, and they feel this way because there simply isn't enough to do when doing 'optimal dps' with your talent choices. Beast Mastery Hunter's feel ignored because there has been no effort to address this concern mechanically, and pets still have bugs on major new content that has existed for weeks or months in Legion such as Karazhan's new chess event, and 'The Rat Pack' achievement. 7.1.5 did nothing to fix these issues and despite buffs and concerns over new Legendary implementation BM Hunter's ended up being a bottom 3 DPS and needed major buffs on the 17th to fix this.

Marksmenship Hunter's are upset because they feel as if Blizzard doesn't have a direction for how they want their rotations to work. It's as if Blizzard is in conflict with themselves, but they're trying to fit a square peg through a round hole no matter how much the MM community is begging and pleading with them to not push through some of these changes. 7.1.5 came, the changes went through, and MM Hunters plummeted down the DPS charts to be a bottom 3 spec.

Survival Hunter's are upset because their spec feels completely unfinished and as if it's being used as a test bed for other Hunter and class abilities. When you play a Survival Hunter you feel like they just jammed everything they could into it, and caused massive ability bloat that they got rid of headed into legion for other classes and specs. The problem is that there isn't any good reward for it. Your spells are often weaker than similar versions in other classes, and you do bottom 3 dps, which is where you were at before 7.1.5.

So to put this in summary, each specialization has an upset player base because they feel as if the design process for their spec never left beta. It's either missing spells, has too many half-baked spells, or it has a design that is developers haven't fully committed to alerting or not yet.

The damage issues don't upset me as much as the mechanical issues each spec faces, and Blizzard could really do a better job of communicating with our community on the subject.

[threads]

7.1.5 nerfing sidewinders basically just ripped off the bandaid fix and revealed the clunky spec that was present in alpha.

glad people are finally seeing how badly designed all the hunter specs are so hopefully we can get dev's attention for once.

[Viking]

Hunter will be hotfixed next patch, they will be fine

If still being at the bottom of WCL counts as "fine", then I agree. If they were the only ones getting buffed they'd only move up a couple spots on wcl. Since the other shit specs are also getting buffed, nothing will change. DPS will be better but hunter will still be bottom tier.

7.1.5 nerfing sidewinders basically just ripped off the bandaid fix and revealed the clunky spec that was present in alpha.

glad people are finally seeing how badly designed all the hunter specs are so hopefully we can get dev's attention for once.

Exactly this.

[Knaar]

Thanks for the laugh, just a quick look at the logs someone posted, the 2 huntards used a single target spec instead of the aoe spec on an aoe fight. I understand why they got benched :')

[Arkthugal]

I disagree with what he is saying that blizz just gave up on survival because no one wants to play it. We all know ALOT of people will play it with a few numbers tweaking. Im talking spriest numbers lel

The actual reason nobody is playing survival is because nobody has room for another melee. The expansion launched, range were sorta weak, and literally everyone and their dog went melee. Predictably, there's not enough room for all of them.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so much of a problem if Blizzard ever added a new ranged class rather than all melee all the time.

[Shadow Fox]

I find it odd (And kind of funny, and also really abusive at the same time) that Blizzard kept saying "Bring the player, not the class" but the changes that they have been doing with Draenor, Legion Beta, and not with 7.1.5 only seem to have made the problems worse. (Not even counting the issues with Legendaries.)

[Charge me Doctor]

Thanks for the laugh, just a quick look at the logs someone posted, the 2 huntards used a single target spec instead of the aoe spec on an aoe fight. I understand why they got benched :')

To be fair, they could be asked by RL to deal ST damage since they were lacking of it, but obviously didn't delivered, so they were replaced by better ST oriented classes (or did they?!). Anyways, if this was the case then i would like to ask RL what's the deal with affliction warlocks and why they weren't replaced in favor of more shadow priests kappa

- - - Updated - - -

I find it odd (And kind of funny, and also really abusive at the same time) that Blizzard kept saying "Bring the player, not the class" but the changes that they have been doing with Draenor, Legion Beta, and not with 7.1.5 only seem to have made the problems worse. (Not even counting the issues with Legendaries.)

I think that you don't understand the root of the problem of bringing certain classes in a raid. Aka, "sorry you can't have a spot for a raid regardless of your performance because we need 4 shamans for totems, at least 3 druids for innervates, 4 priests for MC and bunch of various other classes for buffs so realistically we have only 5 spots left and all of them are taken"

With addition of overlapping buffs it became kinda better, but not really. Now it's pure bring the player, not the class outside of cutting edge content.

[Zantos]

The actual reason nobody is playing survival is because nobody has room for another melee. The expansion launched, range were sorta weak, and literally everyone and their dog went melee. Predictably, there's not enough room for all of them.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so much of a problem if Blizzard ever added a new ranged class rather than all melee all the time.

Add to it that they added Demon Hunters are the same time who are melee only. BM and MM also have utility, such as MD to help on the pull. SV has nothing.

Hunter are a bit low right now and that's why they are receiving very strong buff in the next reset...

Sadly, hunters are still looking to be just Crap with these number tweaks. Some people are reporting that these buffs will only bring us up by 30k-40k. Not that big. I will wait and hope though since others are getting nerfed.

they might just not know exactly how to fix it yet.

Give them some Raid utility, like an Aoe damage reduction, and then people will consider taking a melee hunter over a ranged hunter. PS: BM and MM gear are interchangeable. So if one goes bad, the other is ready to go without having to gear them again.

I disagree with what he is saying that blizz just gave up on survival because no one wants to play it. We all know ALOT of people will play it with a few numbers tweaking. Im talking spriest numbers lel

I disagree fully. Hunters are ranged. No one wants a melee hunter when they can have a ranged hunter. Why they made survival melee, I don't know. Its not a numbers thing, the numbers for survival have been there for a good bit up until 7.1.5. Its a No one wants more melee at all thing. No raid wants them. A few casual guilds will take them, sure. However, most serious raiding guilds who do heroics and what not Avoid Melee at all costs.

Unless survival gets a buff to the point that they are The Best dps around, No one will bring them when a Ranged is just preferred just so much more. So, I politely disagree.

[Madh4tter]

DMG buffs arent going to fix the punishing gameplay

[Devilyaki]

This has not been a good expansion so far for hunter. I never even bothered leveling mine this time around, and I mained one since bc.

[Deleted]

i feel like you have a very closed mind about the way hunter is played right now. right now in patch 7.1.5 hunters bring no utilities to any fights

Did we even read the same patch notes? Are we even talking about the same class at this point? Utility =/= damage. They didn't touch a single piece of utility MM or BM hunters had. Exhilaration? Unchanged. Missdirect? Unchanged. Aspect of the Turtle? Unchanged. So how in the bloody hell do you get the idea that they suddenly bring no utility to raids despite their utility skills remaining untouched?

[Dracodraco]

Whelp after seeing these logs i'm quite convinced that hunters were benched for being bad players, not for being hunters.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
Seriously, just look at that. Ugh. Looks like the case of "first week of strong changes but players still stick to old builds and couldn't adapt to them yet so we changed them to other class that wasn't changed that much so players won't fuck up and do 300k DPS"

Isn't even the case. They SHOULD probably be using the old build for Helya (Sidewinders over trick shot, that is) because Helya is a fight filled with semi-spread cleave in all phases.
This is a clear case of "OMG CHANGES HAPPENED OLD BUILD SUCKS GOTTA USE THE NEW ONE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY ON A PROGRESSION FIGHT".

(also they're probably bad).

Did we even read the same patch notes? Are we even talking about the same class at this point? Utility =/= damage. They didn't touch a single piece of utility MM or BM hunters had. Exhilaration? Unchanged. Missdirect? Unchanged. Aspect of the Turtle? Unchanged. So how in the bloody hell do you get the idea that they suddenly bring no utility to raids despite their utility skills remaining untouched?

Mainly because we had no utility before the changes, either. You can't really argue MD or Exhilaration as "utility", because neither are in any way, shape or form going to change an encounter. This isn't WOTLK where threat actually matters - unless you run with terrible tanks, MD is a wasted effort (and even then, with the fact that we now have a few globals worth of ramp-up time unless we've banked a marking targets proc, it also means that pretty much any class hitting with a hard nuke is going to out-threat our MD either way).

As for a 30% heal, that's a self CD that doesn't even let us survive stuff. It lets us heal up from a mistake. Unless you count self cds like Barkskin or Unending resolve as "utility", there's no way to argue exhil is either.

The only utility hunters can be argued to have at this point is turtle, which is... Okay, I guess? It's quite bad compared to what other classes get, for the most part though (Wind rush totems, stampeding roar, innervate, commanding shout, mass dispell/VE with the legendary helm, stuff like that - things that effect the RAID). We're okay with just an immunity though, because they made them a lot more rare by removing greater invis and dispersion from the pool, so it's not terrible. It's just... you really can't argue we do well on utility when a class such as retribution gets both bubble on demand, AND the ability to turn it into a cheat-death if wanted.

[Deleted]

The actual reason nobody is playing survival is because nobody has room for another melee. The expansion launched, range were sorta weak, and literally everyone and their dog went melee. Predictably, there's not enough room for all of them.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so much of a problem if Blizzard ever added a new ranged class rather than all melee all the time.

You make it sound like open melee spots rival even legendaries in terms of rarity. Luckily they aren't.

Also, if that were the only reason why survival isn't that much seen in a raiding environment, then that wouldn't be to bad and easily fixed by making more melee friendly raid content.

[Dracodraco]

You make it sound like open melee spots rival even legendaries in terms of rarity. Luckily they aren't.

Also, if that were the only reason why survival isn't that much seen in a raiding environment, then that wouldn't be to bad and easily fixed by making more melee friendly raid content.

If you don't actually think that we've been asking for less punishing melee encounters for YEARS, you're delusional man. It's a given fact that range has a leg up on melee in most encounters, and this has been the way it's been ever since I started raiding seriously in Cataclysm. Over the years, the only boss I can think of where I *wanted* to take melee over ranged was Iron Qon in Throne of thunder. To an extent, Guarm fits the bill, but that's mostly because more melee means it's easier to force the boss to jump to melee over ranged, which gives the melee slightly better uptime when he doesn't jump the fuck away (conversatively this might also be countered by the melee not being able to hit him while he runs around, but our dispel tactic is reliant on mass dispel, which means doge jumping to ranged and knocking the priest usually led to a quick wipe).

If you've got 20 dps spots in a guild (that's a decent approximation - 5 healers, 2 tanks, 20 dps with one dps having tank OS, one healing OS for obscure fights gives a healthy 27 person roster), chances are you want a spread of either 8:12 or 7:13 melee/range - despite way more melee classes/specs being available than ranged.

[Angrox]

7.1.5 nerfing sidewinders basically just ripped off the bandaid fix and revealed the clunky spec that was present in alpha.

glad people are finally seeing how badly designed all the hunter specs are so hopefully we can get dev's attention for once.

Most accurate post i've seen on this forum yet

[Deleted]

Mainly because we had no utility before the changes, either. You can't really argue MD or Exhilaration as "utility", because neither are in any way, shape or form going to change an encounter. This isn't WOTLK where threat actually matters - unless you run with terrible tanks, MD is a wasted effort (and even then, with the fact that we now have a few globals worth of ramp-up time unless we've banked a marking targets proc, it also means that pretty much any class hitting with a hard nuke is going to out-threat our MD either way).

As for a 30% heal, that's a self CD that doesn't even let us survive stuff. It lets us heal up from a mistake. Unless you count self cds like Barkskin or Unending resolve as "utility", there's no way to argue exhil is either.

The only utility hunters can be argued to have at this point is turtle, which is... Okay, I guess? It's quite bad compared to what other classes get, for the most part though (Wind rush totems, stampeding roar, innervate, commanding shout, mass dispell/VE with the legendary helm, stuff like that - things that effect the RAID). We're okay with just an immunity though, because they made them a lot more rare by removing greater invis and dispersion from the pool, so it's not terrible. It's just... you really can't argue we do well on utility when a class such as retribution gets both bubble on demand, AND the ability to turn it into a cheat-death if wanted.

I do not count stuff like Exhilaration as utility. Not directly at least. But if those things were nerfed, you'd make it more difficult for healers which in turn would make it less appealing to have a hunter in a raid group. But overall, when you say Hunters had no utility before 7.1.5 then this is just plain wrong as many can attest to.

No dps class is able to contribute utility in a meaningful or grand way. So when the contribution is small like "missdirect the spiderlings in the elerethe Renferal fight" or "clear the brambles at cenarius" then this is more than enough to give as a hunter. Don't dismiss that so easily and claim that there is no point to it.

[Deleted]

Yeah rank 250 or something guild benched some hunters. I guess the show's over, cya next tier hunters.

[Dracodraco]

I do not count stuff like Exhilaration as utility. Not directly at least. But if those things were nerfed, you'd make it more difficult for healers which in turn would make it less appealing to have a hunter in a raid group. But overall, when you say Hunters had no utility before 7.1.5 then this is just plain wrong as many can attest to.

No dps class is able to contribute utility in a meaningful or grand way. So when the contribution is small like "missdirect the spiderlings in the elerethe Renferal fight" or "clear the brambles at cenarius" then this is more than enough to give as a hunter. Don't dismiss that so easily and claim that there is no point to it.

Again, misdirect is not utility because it hasn't been useful since Cataclysm, and because our abilities hit like wet noodles without ramp up any other class attacking a mob will rip aggro. You saying misdirecting spiderlings being utility just irks me the wrong way, because realistically that's never going to happen unless you build a strategy around doing it (at which point, why not just have the tank go hit them once so they're glued to him rather than try to add a middle man?).

As for no dps class able to contribute in a meaningful way, that's pure fucking bullshit and you know it.

Commanding shout? A fucking raidwide damage reduction CD.
Stampeding/Windrush totems? A fucking raidwide sprint to counter movement abilities (Such as Helya's orbs in P3). Portals go in this same category.
Heck, retribution paladins gets an immunity, a lay on hands, AND an external physical immunity they can use to block entire raid mechanics (such as Odyns' or Cenarius' spears).
Helya essentially had shadow priests as a REQUIREMENT because of mass dispel - even if their DPS had sucked, you'd have taken spriests for MD because of how much easier it made the fights.

Are all encounters DOABLE without this? Sure, but they're also doable without immunities. There's no denying that with Misdirect being entirely useless in a competitive environment (and essentially just a tool for us to pull mobs onto slow tanks in dungeons), hunters are in the bottom tier of utility - sitting right beside mages, and slightly ahead of windwalkers, and potentially DKs now that they no longer have mass grip.

[Deleted]

"Hey guys preach here, hunters are pretty bad rn, i mean we had to bench some of ours this week because of it".

2/3 of the responses : "Well you're just shit at being a fire mage lol u bad stfu".

I mean, it's great if you think hunters are in a good place, at least you'll be smiling while cleaning the bench.

[Deleted]

If those Hunters are playing anything like in that video, of course they will get benched... the players fault, not the Hunter rofl

EDIT:

Hunters don't bring anything usefull? How about bres, Bloodlust, slows, traps, interrupt that doesn't have a 24 sec CD (as SV), great soaking with Aspect of the Turtle and there is probably a lot more that I'm forgetting.