Hunters may get re-worked in 6.0

[Deleted]

What they should do to improve hunters.

BASELINE :

> Aspect of the Hawk should increase agility 10% instead of attackpower - Is a baseline passive ability now that will be always activated regardless of which defensive or utilty stance you are using.

> Explosive Trap damage equalized for all specs, doing 200% more damage.

> Increase focus pool to 120 baseline for all specs.

> Thrill of the hunt now is a baseline passive for Survival again!

> Deterrence now allows you to damage you enemies at reduced damage.

> Pet versatility, every pet can now be used in every spec, and you can choose which buff your pet can provide to the raid (it's probably very difficult to do so, but it would allow hunters to bring the pet they love the most and therefor making them happier). There will still be an exception with exotic abilities, they cannot be used outside BM spec.

> Glyph of the loyal one : Even when sacrificing your pet with linked souls you still will have your pet next to you in a ghostly form and it will assist you in battle but won't do any damage (minor).

> Empowerment of the Swift Serpent (passive) : Increases the movement speed of your raid by 15%. Other movement speed effects stack multiplicative with this aura.

> Rapid Fire now refunds focus for every spec.

> Gone like wind, move like arrow : When your target moves out of range, you instantly blink behind them and instantly finish the shot you were casting. This has a 30sec ICD. (Could be fun if worked out well, probably very difficult to design though).

TALENTS :

45 : >Aspect of the Ironhawk< now reduces your damage taken by 20%.

>Spirit Bond< : now heals you for 3% per 2 seconds.

>Might of the Tortoise< : You call upon ancient creatures to protect you, and shield you for your maximum hp - lasts 10 seconds - 3 minute cooldown - reduces damage done by 25%.

60 : >Fervor< : Restores 60 instantly and 120 over time.

>Aura of Restoration< : Increases the regen of resources for yourself by 15% and by 5% for your raid or party members (yay unique raid utility!).

>Aspect of the Fox< : Whenever you take damage, you passively regen 5 focus to you and your pet.

75 : >A Murder of Crows< is now a 15 second duration with a 1 minute cooldown.

>Linked Souls< You and your pet link their souls, sacrificing your pet, increasing the damage you do with all abilities by 25%. Not sure how this would work with bm, but maybe it should work like dinomancers, you transform into a beast yourself?

90 : I would definitely remove powershot for something new, but at this point I have no inspiration to come up with something.

BM :

> Rework Mastery : Call of the Wild : Everytime your pet deals damage you have a x.x % chance to summon an ancient beast. The beast only lasts 15 seconds, however it's attacks will scale directly of haste.

> Might of the Beasts : When specced into BM, your pets do 25% more damage. When specced into linked souls, it will increase your damage done by an additional 10%.

> Bestial Wrath : Now works with or without pet, if used without a pet, increases your damage by 30% instead of 20%.

> Focus Fire : Removed. Changed into Frenzied Assault (Passive), whenever your pet does a critical strike with a basic ability you have the chance to proc frenzied assault, increasing your haste by 30% and granting you 2 focus per 1 second for the next 10 seconds.

> Beast Cleave : when using Linked souls, your multishot will cost 10 less focus and do 15% more damage. Kill command will now also be split amongst all targets within 10 yards while beast cleave is active.

> Cobra shot and Arcane shot damage increased by 5%.

SV :

> Mastery no longer increases elemental damage done, however it now increased damage by explosive shot, black arrow, serpent sting and traps by certain values (not all the same).

> Entrapment is reverted back to the old form, no longer breaks under damage but reduces the root in PvP to 2 seconds. Still remains 4 seconds in PvE.

> Multishot now does 15% less damage, however your serpent spread does full damage now.

> Black Arrow : Now grants you 2 charges and allows you to somewhat multidot, to balance it out LnL no longer triggers from any traps.

> Explosive Shot : Now also does 50% damage to all targets within 10 yards from your target.

> Cobra shot and Arcane shot damage increased by 15%.

MM :

Mastery reworked : It now increases the critical chance and physical proportion of your aimed shot and chimera shot by x.x %.

Steady shot is changed into Cobra shot, now works identical to Cobra shot and refreshes your serpent sting. The ranged attack speed and focus regeneration from using steady shot twice in a row is now baseline and a passive ability that will always be active while playing MM.

Chimera shot has been reworked, everytime you chimera shot, it will reduce the cast time of your next aimed shot by 50% This effect stacks up to 3x and lasts for 20 seconds.

Aimed shot is reverted back to a 2.5 second baseline cast. Critical chance of aimed shot above 80% has been removed but aimed shot now does 15% more damage to compensate.

Kill shot cooldown in MM now has a 25% shorted cd and does 15% more damage.

-

Some of this might seem a bit too OP, or bad, I was bored so I had some fun I guess! :P

^- sounds nice but the more focus reg U have the more problem like serpentstings rans out or u overcap ur focus will happen.
and 4 survival delete multi shot and introduce "venomess bomb" let your main target target explode doing xx% dmg to the main target and xx% dmg to its surroundings + serpentspread (now also deals a fraktion of black arrow dmg+spread :I) -> rename maybe.. but yeah makin mastery somewhat desired again ....on live 50% is ~ with baseline stats phys dmg makin' mastery crap or buffin' mastery to 2% would be great.. just my 2 cent ah make shots cost more and do more dmg but also buffing the damn pool to pool 4 dmg burst or give us less regen or "no" regen instead put it in our abilities to gain focus and then spent it with lower focus cost and more dmg on the skills to make cobra/steady shot not a "meeehhh" shot but blizz dont think about it.. and its also only numbers... if you give us more reg u need a bigger pool .. and really make cobra shot like pandemie 4 wls... it sucks to cap here and let the dot runs out if u have to much focus reg + lnl proc .. lnl proc should buff dmg not give us 2 more gc to waste.

[eschatological]

A combustion/impact spread mechanic might be interesting in SV, I like it.

Make BA like Living Bomb (can only be spread to 3 targets), make SrS spread on everything. Make a combustion like CD that creates a super powerful DoT. SV is definitely missing a signature CD.

[Priestamgpwn]

A combustion/impact spread mechanic might be interesting in SV, I like it.

Make BA like Living Bomb (can only be spread to 3 targets), make SrS spread on everything. Make a combustion like CD that creates a super powerful DoT. SV is definitely missing a signature CD.

Well if SV had some ability like combustion ,plus some new dot we get in next expansion, SV could also have ability that when activated deal 100% of all dots on main target + 75% on all targets that have that new dot ( for it to work we obviously need Improved [Insert new dot name] ). Altho it would probably deal less damage than i said, since damage would probably be very high with my setup ^^.

[Sturmbringe]

I tweeted a couple of questions to GC about hunters. I added a few extra remarks from other tweeters that related in first question

Q: Do you feel hunters need the most work out of all the pures for spec differences and dmg output as of now for 6.0?
A: We think rogues and hunters need more spec differentiation. We want the spec choice to come down to kit or specific rotation. I agree that hunters need work on both. Hunters are the only pure that feel a little low, and we are buffing them slightly in 5.3.

Q: Many hunters want a MM completely re-design. Possible?
A: I would use that word with caution. It would not be at the warlock level. Are there things we can do? Yes.




I think it's pretty clear that we can hefty re-design in our rotations and shots and possibly talents for 6.0 but the fundamentals still in place for focus regen etc.

But it's a welcome change

I have been playing since 2005 and Hunters have been constantly "reworked" all these years. My main was a Hunter back in Vanilla.



Ever since I joined, Blizzard has been "redesigning" Hunters. They never actually knew what to do with Hunters. After so many expansions and Hunters being redesigned in each one I really don't believe that Blizzard can get Hunters right.

Current incarnation of the Hunter is the worst imo. I best liked the Vanilla model with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Counterattack, and casted aimed shot that hit for 2.5-3k crit when everyone had about 4.5k to 5k health pools.

Hunters who knew how to play were really dreaded and widely respected then. A good Hunter could wyvern sting one opponet, wing clip+trap another and kill a third opponent not to mention that the combo or Rok+Lok meant wide respect and whispers of admiration.

Then again I have no interest as I am not subbed and probably won't sub until they introduce Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK servers.

[Renisis86]

I have been playing since 2005 and Hunters have been constantly "reworked" all these years. My main was a Hunter back in Vanilla.

Ever since I joined, Blizzard has been "redesigning" Hunters. They never actually knew what to do with Hunters. After so many expansions and Hunters being redesigned in each one I really don't believe that Blizzard can get Hunters right.

Current incarnation of the Hunter is the worst imo. I best liked the Vanilla model with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Counterattack, and casted aimed shot that hit for 2.5-3k crit when everyone had about 4.5k to 5k health pools.

Hunters who knew how to play were really dreaded and widely respected then. A good Hunter could wyvern sting one opponet, wing clip+trap another and kill a third opponent not to mention that the combo or Rok+Lok meant wide respect and whispers of admiration.

Then again I have no interest as I am not subbed and probably won't sub until they introduce Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK servers.

....I agree Vanilla was awesome. But I wouldn't still be playing if the Hunter class never evolved. Imagine playing the same rotation for years....I will agree I miss melee weapons, and their attatcks. The Dead zone sucked but it was a trade off. But either way any MMO is about moving foward. The Hunter class never will be perfect, and if it ever is it wont last for long. Like any class Hunters have their ups and downs. BC was an UP (in terms of raw damage play style was boring), I feel WOTLK was close to perfect, and I missed the cata swap to focus. But MOP focus is livable. The class is fun to play the Damage just doesnt seem to be their for PURE DPS class.

Id like to see MM be re-worked to a more concrete rotation. It would be different than the other 2 trees. Also bring back Sniper Training turn it into an talent.

[Gruntykins]

Current incarnation of the Hunter is the worst imo. I best liked the Vanilla model with Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Counterattack

May as well rename yourself Rosetintedgoggles.

My only qualm with hunters at the moment are that aspects are pretty much non-existent. Change em to CDs or something, I dunno. Make Hawk baseline. Maybe give us more glyph options, most don't feel good. Less button bloat.

[Deleted]

Well since Blizz doesn't really have any idea what to do with hunters since wotlk (if they did i'm sure they would done it by now) i really do not expect anything good for 6.0. Gear scaling is horrible and all they come up with every xpac/patch is a linear Hawk X% ap buff - its just like a pimple makeup - its better but its still awfull.
All debuffs (except srs) are scaling dynamically so its just a pure whack-a-button with a scumbag dps sting on non worthy targets, not to mention with rppm system its just not benefitial to delay cd for dps bursts or taking advantage of procs for higher dps.

Some ideas are really cool but imo are based on other classes abilities and we got more and more unification and class merging each patch. Some want nuke critting abilities and they do not see that its a wish it will never come true for strictly pvp reasons (untill blizz will make every ability in the game with separate pvp/pve formulas - yeah right )

6.0 in terms of development will probably bring new (hero?)class/profession to the game and that will be their focus mostly with one more tier in the tallent tree for all. hunters as always will be placed last as they always have been and probably they will redo some options that were already tested on previous PTR's and have not come live at that time (no cd BA with all target in line dot/ ExS cleave, etc.)

[khalamo]

I would love changes to hunter.

MM - lone wolf hunter. You no longer need pet as you are the real king of the jungle and its only slowing you down. While petless MM hunter deals more dmg by drawing less attention to him and has easier time aiming for weak spots. High focus regen, increased max focus and some nice proc'ing skills. Deals increased dmg the further he is from target.

SV - Survival is everything, Master of traps. Give 2-3 more traps that deal damage and debuff the target. Dots + traps main source of damage, low focus regen and low focus usage (traps do not require focus)

BM - You and your pet are one. 2 - 3 more skills added to arsenal beside kill command. New Bestial Within - you and your pet are one, your soul is transfered to your pet (hunter body vanishes from the battlefield and his hp is transfered to his pet while boosting all its stats). During this time you are directly controlling your pet, after the duration expires hunter emerges 10-15 yard behind his pet (during this time his dmg is lowered due to recent shifting, your pet still deals increase damage during this time). Your exotic pets have 1 free skill slot (can use anything except for additional CC ability)

Raid wide utility
Expose weakness - years of training has helped you develop eye of the hunter. By observing your enemies and they reactions you are able to find weak spots in your enemies. Procs from all hunter & pet attacks, 5-10% increased damage for X sec with Y sec icd. (raid wide debuff on target)
Griffon/Chimera blessing (alliance/horde versions) - All party members receive 30% increased mastery bonus for 15-20sec, 5-10min CD.

[Deleted]

If Hunters get yet another rework, I'm the first person to quit that god damn game.

[3clipse]

I've been playing a Hunter since 2006 and I think we're the best we've ever been right now. I don't really want to go back to having a deadzone and DPS being a steady/auto macro :P

[Tehstool]

I've been playing a Hunter since 2006 and I think we're the best we've ever been right now. I don't really want to go back to having a deadzone and DPS being a steady/auto macro :P

Yeah, I like how hunters are now a lot. Tbh, I wouldn't want them to rework hunters in the slightest.

[Sydarm]

i really dont understand how people are happy with hunters right now


DPS is lowest of pures
Rotations are boring
the only reason to switch specs is for better AOE... not rotations or play style
We bring not a single raid mechanic/utility to a 25 man setting
pets are horrible AI/Pathing

Most guilds only bring 1 to a raid because of this. Why are you happy?

[3clipse]

i really dont understand how people are happy with hunters right now


DPS is lowest of pures
Rotations are boring
the only reason to switch specs is for better AOE... not rotations or play style
We bring not a single raid mechanic/utility to a 25 man setting
pets are horrible AI/Pathing

Most guilds only bring 1 to a raid because of this. Why are you happy?

Because we remember having mana, DPSing by spamming a single macro, and not being able to do anything to someone who stood in a 5-8 yard range. Oh, oh! And not being allowed to ever use our pets because of how raid mechanics worked, or our pets just dying 30 seconds into a fight because of AoE.

Focus is way more interesting than mana ever was. And we can move while shooting now! It's crazy awesome!

I can only imagine the people unhappy with hunters right now didn't play the first half of TBC, in which pets sat in the front of the boss to attack and we had to stand still to deal damage and chug mana pots on cooldown to avoid going oom every single fight, and the best way to DPS was to make a single macro and spam that button for the whole fight. Real fun! Oh, and our only AoE was an 8 second channel with a 1 minute cooldown with a gigantic mana cost. And everyone had to take the same pets (Ravagers for most people, Wind Serpents if you had >35% average crit in raid) and if you weren't playing BM your DPS was never worth considering.

Anyway, they've already said that they want to buff hunter DPS and plan to rework the class so that the specs feel more different, they're clearly aware that people are unhappy.

[Deleted]

tbh i think a re-work to the warlock lvl is something that its prob needed for most vanilla specs

[Kiea]

I suspect all those who used macros either played in TBC or were not very good hunters, since using a cast sequence macro in Wrath was a bad idea, sure you could get decent DPS with it compared to some other classes, but it was not optimal, right now I can also just make a macro, get decent damage, but far from optimal.

I don't like focus, I like how mana worked in Wrath, and if mana was something you "forgot" about, make abilities cost more mana, some fights you had to use Aspect of the Viper on, others you didn't, and with the length of fights today compared to then, you would need it on the majority of fights.


Now, while I prefer mana, I don't dread focus and I can live with it, my problem is with how the hunter class works, there is very little variety in the different specs, we scale only extra with agility because of Aspect of the Hawk.

If we look at the scaling outside of main stats, we have -

Survival -
None

Marksmanship -
Piercing Shots (30% of a crit on Chimera, Steady and Aimed is dealt as a bleed over 8 seconds)

Beast Mastery -
Go for the Throat - Auto shot critical restore 15 focus to your pet.


Can you see the awful scaling? the best one is obviously MM, with Piercing Shots being a significant portion of our DPS, and the BM one is meh. The first fix to this is easy - make dots scale with haste, this is easy and will increase our DPS by quite a bit, especially with how hard SpS is hitting right now. Next up is making Viper Venom scale the same as SpS.

If we take a quick look at other of the classes who scale really well (focusing on ranged classes) -
Mages, they have a lot of crit/haste dependent stuff, fire have hot streak and ignite, aswell as their dots scaling with haste, not sure how big this is though.
Warlocks, loads and loads of dots, haven't played them in Cata, but they scale very well with haste i suppose.
Shadow Priests, Dots again, aswell as having their dots cause procs (Mind Blast from SW:P, Mind Spike from Vampiric Touch, don't think they spec in it though).
Boomkins, Haste for dots, and crit causes dots to cause more starsurge procs, and starsurge crits increases all dots duration, and starfire/wrath increases duration of dots moonfire/sunfire, which then causes more starsurge procs, and its a big chain, probably the best scaling class with secondary specs along with fire mages.
Ele Shamans, Not sure how they scale, wont comment.

Okay so now we need new ways for us to scale, one way is to just buff our AotH to 50%, making Agility far better and solving the scaling problem there. Otherwise we need procs of some sort, a few ideas that may or may not be terrible -

Survival
Serpent Sting critical strikes causes your next Cobra shot to apply a secondary Serpent Sting that lasts for X seconds, the secondary SpS cannot proc this effect.
Black Arrow critical strikes causes your next explosive shot to deal shadow damage and add an additional tick.

I can't think of anything for the other two right now, but you get the idea, these might be fairly similar but oh well, we need scaling with haste and crit like other classes have.

[3clipse]

I actually don't understand what your post is trying to say. That we should be more reliant on secondary stats?

We are, notably, not casters. We're ranged physical. So the classes you should look at for comparison are Warriors, Death Knights, and Rogues, who all act pretty much the same in terms of secondary stats.

Mana was silly and doesn't make any sense for a ranger type class. And it sucked in Wrath. Either you had a ret pally and never had to worry about it, or you didn't and you went oom halfway through the fight and had shitty DPS until you filled it back up by DPSing in Aspect of the Viper.

Every spec already has a unique proc (Lock and Load, Master Marksman, Focus Fire). Black Arrow already triggers Lock and Load...another proc would just be goofy.

edit: Also, 5.3 buffs Aspect of the Hawk. So....you're getting what you want? I think?

[Bisso]

You're perfectly fine with hunters? LOL wut

We have the lowest dmg of the pures... we bring no raid wide utility in 25s... why would u ever bring a hunter over another DPS class in 25s other than to take mail gear?

To be fair, for every hunter that do not play at Heroic high end level, class viability hardly affects any of us. I top meters in pretty much all normal runs with guilds, pug, openraid, lfr. Yes, maybe if I would face good players of heroic progression I would look bad, but remember most of us don't play at that level, so we can actually counterweight any mathematic lost with skills.

On topic: They have to change the name Survival, because, this now has nothing to do with the actual spec.

[A Murder of Crows]

To be fair, for every hunter that do not play at Heroic high end level, class viability hardly affects any of us. I top meters in pretty much all normal runs with guilds, pug, openraid, lfr. Yes, maybe if I would face good players of heroic progression I would look bad, but remember most of us don't play at that level, so we can actually counterweight any mathematic lost with skills.

On topic: They have to change the name Survival, because, this now has nothing to do with the actual spec.

So lets nerf damage and take any raid CD or buffs from mages, rogues and warlock 'couse "remember most of us don't play at that level, so we can actually counterweight any mathematic lost with skills." There is alot of LFR-"raiders"
I am not killed Raden or have 9'000+ on arena/RBG, but for now, when other classes have a good gear (and they have better scale from it), I see that I have good static becouse I have friends in it. Why should any RL take a hunter? Now the only reason is agi mail, ranged weapon, "OMG! Not another caster! They already fight for trinkets!" and maybe some shitty work like add on Horridon. I wanna be as cool as warlock. Or rouge. But I am not and that's very sad.
*sigh* Sorry for common truth of these days, but I just don't understand why some hunters just... don't care.

[Malackai]

Well if they do some redesign I hope it makes sense.

On an other note something actually dawned on me a couple of days ago doesn't anyone find it odd that survival is the only spec without an innate self heal?
BM have their spirit beasts, MM has chimera yet survival the iconic spec thats all about surviving has nada.
I am not counting animal bond or exhilaration because all specs have access to that.

I personally would like to see survival getting some kind of self heal as well. Perhaps even a tiny bit more potent then the BM or MM versions seeing the survival spec implies masters of surviving :P

Some ideas I thought about:
1 ) Either something tied in with black arrow or cobra shot or serpent sting. To prevent button bloat (but then it simply might look like a glorified chimerashot :S)

2) Something separate like a Medipack/healing salve (Works like an improved bandage it also applies a 5-10 second buff that increases the healing done to you by other players or when using healing items(HS, pots or even normal bandages, when a bandage is used during the buff it doesn't apply the recently bandage debuff) skill has 1 or 2 min cd.

3) Or the Medipack as a similar heal like chimera shot heals 5% total health and has 10-15 seconds cooldown) (but then its more of a lower cooldown type of exhiliration. and basically just an extra button you press in your rotation I guess :S)

4) An other option is mark of the viper/leech. When this mark is placed on a target it leaches X% of your total health over 30 seconds, also during this period extra damaging shots fired at the target heal for x% total health extra. x minute cd.

5)Add a mastery passive called Master survivalist:
Increases healing potency from HS, potions and bandages. Also bandages can now be used even with the "recently bandaged" debuff. However the debuff simply lessens the effectiveness of the next bandage by 50% stacks to 3. "recently bandaged" debuff still lasts 1 min.(or refreshes when you keep using bandages?)

6) A other passive: Mastery of the leech. Causes you and your pet to be healed for X% amount of the damage you deal. effect cannot occur more more often then every x seconds. (glorified riftstalker set bonus as passive I guess)

My personal favorites are number: 2,4 and 5
2. simply because it also has potential helping you survive unavoidable raid wide damage, and blizzard seems very stoked with those types of encounters lately. its technically a more potent bandage but the buff you get from it can help take some strain of the healers also it can be used as an oh crap button seeing you can pop a free bandage during the buff.

4. now that I think of it the extra x% of total health gained during the mark duration might be a bit OP maybe make it a little bit more like getting healed x% of damage dealt.

5. Simply makes the most sense. bandages right now heal for about ~25% total health over 8 seconds. (120k on 500k health pool currently) so the first one heals for around 240k second one 120k third one and onwards while the debuff last 60k.

All the numbers, percentages and duration/cooldowns are just examples its the idea what counts.

What do you think?

[Fullmetal89]

I think all the specs need to be redesigned at a warlock level. Disappointed that he doesn't feel the same. Hunters have the most homogenized specs in the game with Rogues right behind them.

Give them time, a few months ago Ghostcrawler was saying "hunters are fine, MM is great with the new buffs", which clearly wasn't true. By the end of the X-pac they will be announcing a Warlock treatment for both Hunters, Rogues, and possibly Shamans. Hunters in my opinion need it the most, they have out of all the classes the clunkiest most unreliable rotation. Not to mention that for what ever reason they thought it was a great idea to nerf Surv/MM of cata which was fine, great even. For a bursty BM PvE style that revolves around heavy CD management. All I know is that I've weathered every expansion on my Hunter main since vanilla and the class has definitely had its up and downs but MoP was the death nail for me. I started playing my old Warlock alt and never looked back, it will continue to be my main until I see the Hunter class on par with Mages/Locks.