5.4, hunters in PvE - concerns, etc.

[Avikur]

They could make the healing tier extend raid wide example:

Spirit bond passive: 3% health every 2s. When used extends to raid for 10s. 2min cd

Iron hawk: (remove aspects they're worthless) Make iron hawk / hawk passive. When used extends 10% reduction to raid for 6s. 3min cd

Exhilaration: Heals yourself for 30%, your pet for 100% and any nearby party or raid members for 15%. 1.5m cd


Nothing op in my eyes. Brings a little something extra for us depending on situations and might allow us to diversify that tier a bit more.

Yeh I like the sound of that, Hunters self healing is really bad compared to most other classes.

I'd like to see Hunters have a secondary resource of some kind as well to make the 3 specs feel different, it worked really well for Warlocks and could be used to build up to a big hard hitting attack - again something SV and BM lacks.

[Benggaul]

Honestly, the single most important thing they could do is stop letting PvP affect PvE and vice versa. They've already proven that they can set special rules for abilities when they are used in PvP vs. PvE, so let them continue to do so with abilities that are causing issues (bearing in mind that most of the changes/nerfs appear to be happening simply because other classes are in an uproar about them in PvP).

I stopped playing PvP regularly shortly after BC, not least because I never found it particularly compelling anyway, but every expansion since then I've seen PvE abilities (for nearly every class) being modified (read: nerfed) because other classes complained about how they were so OP in PvP. Fine! Change how they work in PvP, but stop jerking the PvE crowd around like a yo-yo!

[Perrito]

Unless it's been nerfed since the last time I checked, the tallstrider actually applies all 3 stacks when it does the AoE armor debuff, unlike the raptor which has to stack 3 times with the single target debuff. That's why the raptor has a shorter CD than the tallstrider for the debuff.

my b i had 1 and never used after they changed the way they run when they did that DMF mount. i always have a raptor instead of a tailstrider i guess is time to change that.

still i cant use a tailstrider even if i wanted to. im not allowed to bring other than crit and spell haste.

we have no mage and sometimes our ele shaman is picking his nose or siting on a 20 min server que.

i dont think we need unique utility, im fine with having no utility, i do want more dps tho, being able to compete with warlocks, mages and rogues would be nice.

[Thirstblood]

are you fucking kidding me? 20 sec dots for 5 minutes cooldown from stampede? Uber shit, need to be remove from the game. Just... NO...I don't really care how it impact in pvp, Use the disable button in bg, arenas all i fucking care. Ain't hard for fully trained monkey to think of that. >=(

[Larry01]

We're not "willingly giving up doing good dps for a raid cd".

and yet we see tons of these type of posts:

I can deal with being middle of the pack just fine. I don't need or WANT overpowered, top-5 DPS numbers

.

You may not be willing but many are, and thats the problem I was trying to address. In one sentence this one said hes fine with middling dps, says he doesnt want to be top 5 on fights (where a pure dps class should be) and calls being top 5 on fights OP.
I cant state strongly enough how badly this one sentence represents us.

We could use a raid cd sure, I just think addressing our poor dps and scaling would be more important is all.
As for talking out of my ass, I said its not on the table because no discussion as been brought about it outside our dreaming on the forums.

[Tariz]

Class just needs to be reworked tbh

[Ayazaki1218]

So, let me get this right. In 5.4 we are going to be rendered almost useless? All this nerfing does not make sense to me in a PVE perspective, even for PVP they don't either. I can say, we are not OP in PVP, it is just the people that gets owned by skilled hunters that complains. I've been in PVP for a couple of years and I've seen more OP classes there than us. Blizz is just pounding us with the nerf bat to ease QQ'ers and in the process damaging beyond repair PVE. I've played my beloved Hunter since mid BC. Witnessed lots of nerfs, but this... all upcoming nerfing is way beyond anything. I hate to say this but I don't like the direction the class I love to play is heading. If the nerfs came true I will have to let my Hunter rest in pace since I won't be enjoying playing with her anymore. Blizz can't see that many of us like and love a Hunter's playstile and they are just making us hate our class for their constant and unfair nerfs.

Some of the things that anger me more is the Silencing Shot nerf... What the heck? I play in a casual raiding guild and when asked to help the raid I must pay attention if someone screws up the interrupting and help with mine. What I'm supposed to do in 5.4? Just watch how there aren't enough interrupts and wipe because boss is casting his deadly spell and no one can interrupt it in time.

[Tehstool]

So, let me get this right. In 5.4 we are going to be rendered almost useless? All this nerfing does not make sense to me in a PVE perspective, even for PVP they don't either. I can say, we are not OP in PVP, it is just the people that gets owned by skilled hunters that complains. I've been in PVP for a couple of years and I've seen more OP classes there than us. Blizz is just pounding us with the nerf bat to ease QQ'ers and in the process damaging beyond repair PVE. I've played my beloved Hunter since mid BC. Witnessed lots of nerfs, but this... all upcoming nerfing is way beyond anything. I hate to say this but I don't like the direction the class I love to play is heading. If the nerfs came true I will have to let my Hunter rest in pace since I won't be enjoying playing with her anymore. Blizz can't see that many of us like and love a Hunter's playstile and they are just making us hate our class for their constant and unfair nerfs.

We're being compensated for the nerfs, so no we won't be.

[Ayazaki1218]

To be honest sir. I haven't read about a compensation. Perhaps, can you shed some light about them?

[Valkors]

The compensation hasn't been released yet. As of now on the PTR, yes, Hunters are very weak. But they said they will make compensation for it. They are testing things out internally first, so that they can get a grip on it before they release tons of different patches, upsetting and causing panic both of hunters and other classes. Once they feel things are worked out and satisfactory, we will see the results.

[Noctifer616]

The compensation hasn't been released yet. As of now on the PTR, yes, Hunters are very weak.

Survival doesn't suffer much from the Readiness nerf, so with the buff to Arcane Shot it ends up being stronger in 5.4 than on live, even without the compensation for Readiness. BM is a different story, but I don't think that it's that much behind live numbers over the course of a boss encounter.

[asdfsaf]

stampede

while removing buffs/debuffs from stampede pets does indeed remove any utility from stampede (as desired), removing rabid and basic attack reduces its damage by over 70%. allow stampede pets to do rabid and basic attack and raiders will be happy. on a side note, when running with a non-ferocity pet (i.e. tenacity pet for dark animus) you STILL need to carry four other ferocity specced pets to maximize stampede damage, because using glyph of stampede is not a feasible choice in such a situation.

as for "the community demanded stampede" ... personally i never liked the idea of stampede. it's a super lame cooldown, you dont even see what happens when you press it. it was an idea proposed by a couple of people on mmo-champion and that is it. please dear ghostcrawler, don't say it's my fault that stampede is in the game, you made the decision to add it yourself. same goes for camouflage by the way.




readiness

nerfing readiness is the correct choice to tackle current hunter arena issues. doing this correctly doesn't seem to be easy, though. triple trinkets, double silence and double scatter trap in arena need to go, but losing double bestial wrath, dire beast (etc) really hurts pve dps and, more importantly, gameplay/fun.

an option would be a glyph that makes bestial wrath an ability with two charges but removes the trinket effect. however, this glyph would be mandatory (which defeats the purpose of glyphs) and still wouldn't compensate the loss of other spells affected by readiness. another option would be to reduce the cooldown of certain abilities.

if readiness is to remain as it is currently on ptr, removing rapid fire from it is very welcomed, because otherwise hunters will see themselves forced to use it as a dps gain on almost all bosses. additionally, some sort of dps as well as gameplay compensation has to be thought of. fixing lvl 75 talents or making lvl 90 talents less lame would be nice.




utility/survivability/mobility

with survivability nerfs to many classes coming in 5.4, hunters are probably in an okay spot when it comes to EHP. glyph of animal bond remains mandatory (which, as said before, defeats the purpose of glyphs). warlocks remain beyond OP, but that's another story.

utility is virtually nonexisting. i don't really see what ghostcrawler means when he tweets that he's okay with the utility provided by all three hunter specs. silencing shot was somewhat useful in 10 player raiding, practically useless in 25 player raiding. traps are virtually useless with almost no exception. binding shot has its uses here and there. other utility spells: aspect of the pack, master's call, concussive shot. not used very often in raids. nature resistance aura is gone. kiting is gone from raiding.

hunter mobility is very strong. hunters are pretty much melees with 100% uptime. uninterruptible, lots of kiting tools, three trinkets to counter cc. this design made sense when there was a deadzone, but now not so much anymore. nerfing hunter mobility weakens hunters in arena, but doesn't impact raiding too much. of course this would be very unpopular among a great deal of hunters, but when you go with popular opinions you get things like stampede in the end. oh wait, that wasn't even popular to begin with. :-)




other stuff

hunters are
good at single target, sustain aoe,
bad at burst aoe, spread multi-target (multidotting)
and "meh" at stacked multi-target (cleaving)

burst aoe isn't something all classes must have.
as for spread multi-target fights ... buff barrage, it's a bloody joke right now. remove the cooldown of viper venom (which requires some changes elsewhere, i know). remove the cooldown of black arrow and increase its damage. make dots scale with haste. fix the laughable survival mastery. really, just make survival into some spec that is dot-based instead of whatever it's currently supposed to be.

also, adding a bleed effect to something like kill command keeps burst in place but buffs pve dps. perhaps worth a consideration!

[Tehterokkar]

other stuff

hunters are
good at single target, sustain aoe,
bad at burst aoe, spread multi-target (multidotting)
and "meh" at stacked multi-target (cleaving)

burst aoe isn't something all classes must have.
as for spread multi-target fights ... buff barrage, it's a bloody joke right now. remove the cooldown of viper venom (which requires some changes elsewhere, i know). remove the cooldown of black arrow and increase its damage. make dots scale with haste. fix the laughable survival mastery. really, just make survival into some spec that is dot-based instead of whatever it's currently supposed to be.

also, adding a bleed effect to something like kill command keeps burst in place but buffs pve dps. perhaps worth a consideration!

Excuse me, but do we play the same class? Hunters have the best burst AoE in the game when it concerns 6-9 mobs(even better at 10 and over). Learn to pool focus before adds spawn(Lei Shen lightning bolts for example).

Also Barrage is fine, it does the job it was created for, which is an AoE lvl 90 talent, Powershot is PvP and Glaive Toss is single-target.

[asdfsaf]

Excuse me, but do we play the same class? Hunters have the best burst AoE in the game when it concerns 6-9 mobs(even better at 10 and over). Learn to pool focus before adds spawn(Lei Shen lightning bolts for example).

lol'd, go find a guild with players that aren't shit before you comment like that. ball lightnings die in ~2.5 globals on average in guilds that aren't yours. please explain to me how ~3 beast cleave attacks are better than what f.e. demo locks or arcane mages have to offer.

[Windthorn]

Someone suggest to GC to make it so that readiness only resets defensive abilities in arena/rbgs, and keep it as is for PvE otherwise the opener for BM is gonna be so boring.

[Deleted]

lol'd, go find a guild with players that aren't shit before you comment like that. ball lightnings die in ~2.5 globals on average in guilds that aren't yours. please explain to me how ~3 beast cleave attacks are better than what f.e. demo locks or arcane mages have to offer.

100% agree with you on this one!

Hunter cleave is horrible compared to other melle(feral, warrior, dk for example), they easy go to 800k+ burst when we stop around 400k with trap + multishots, glaive/barrage.
Even demo locks and fire mages provides better burst cleave!
Clearly you still are few expansions back when hunter had strong cleave - it is long gone, sir!

Even on single target fights with high movement we are not top dps - do not even mention cleave or multidoting - it hurts a LOT!
Right now we are horrible at cleave, we are horrible at multidoting.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 07:22 AM ----------

Excuse me, but do we play the same class? Hunters have the best burst AoE in the game when it concerns 6-9 mobs(even better at 10 and over). Learn to pool focus before adds spawn(Lei Shen lightning bolts for example).

Also Barrage is fine, it does the job it was created for, which is an AoE lvl 90 talent, Powershot is PvP and Glaive Toss is single-target.

Guess you have never seen good cleave class. Hunters do not stand near!
We may be have better cleave than some multidotting specs like shadow,balance! BUT not close to melle or some caster cleave specs!
You must be in horrible raid if you think that way!

Also barrage is fine ONLY for misdirecting, OR when adds spread too much and you cant hit them with glaive.
But it is not close to toss if you can hit everything with glaive.
Single target barrage is horrible.

Are you even playing hunter? or is it just an act?

[Beace]

Don't know what you're talking about. Our burst aoe might not be best in game, but it's not far off (as BM only). Only issue is it can be tricky to use since it requires your pet to be at the exact right spot at the exact right time.

[Perrito]

Excuse me, but do we play the same class? Hunters have the best burst AoE in the game when it concerns 6-9 mobs(even better at 10 and over). Learn to pool focus before adds spawn(Lei Shen lightning bolts for example).

Also Barrage is fine, it does the job it was created for, which is an AoE lvl 90 talent, Powershot is PvP and Glaive Toss is single-target.

you mean perfectly clump packs of mobs that wont move so the pet can hit them all?

because beast cleave is good if they get the range up to 10 yards or so, not to mention that the pet is most of the times 10 yards away from bosses with big hitbox.

i dont aoe on lei shen, i just single target is a waste of dps for me to shoot 1 multishot. i can do more damage with just 1 arcaneshot.

[Valkyrian]

you mean perfectly clump packs of mobs that wont move so the pet can hit them all?

because beast cleave is good if they get the range up to 10 yards or so, not to mention that the pet is most of the times 10 yards away from bosses with big hitbox.

i dont aoe on lei shen, i just single target is a waste of dps for me to shoot 1 multishot. i can do more damage with just 1 arcaneshot.

Actually you can get pretty amazing burst on the ball lightnings nothing compared to say a warrior/lock but really good of you position your pet properly same with durumu ice walls.

Very well written post that details everything wrong with the class our dps on ptr atm is good but locks/mages are still better in most situations and rogues have much better utility and defensives.

A good raid cd would be the perfect way to band-aid fix us before a complete rework next expansion.

[Deleted]

They should just increase the range of beast cleave.
It s just difficult to perfectly deal with the pet position.

I manage to get a pretty good burst on lei shen though.