5.4, hunters in PvE - concerns, etc.

[Deleted]

I don't get why people keep saying that not having SS in PVE is not a big deal. Sure it's not the greatest interrupt ever, but being able to do it on demand and save the day feels good.

As to Readiness I think it was the only ability to use as hunter, that made otherwise simple rotation interesting.

[Nightspear]

Pretty darn tired of being useless on my hunter. We are 13-14 raiders in our 10man, and 2 are hunters... since we are hunters, we either bench one of us, or both....
On council hc we were skipped (we don't have immunity and pretty shitty dps that fight), Our Megaera heroic progress we were benched (mage, lock, rogue, ele shammie, feral bring more)... We 2 hunter Jin'Rokh and Horridon hc come to think of it. Rest of the fights we are both benched, or one of us.

And this is in a 10/13 hc guild.

Oh yeah... Ive raided pretty much every expansion (break in cata to mop) on my hunter. Raid leader is asking me to reroll, so he doesn't have to bench me all the time.

[Deleted]

We are 13-14 raiders in our 10man, and 2 are hunters... since we are hunters, we either bench one of us

No kidding, that's just the law of probability. It has nothing to do with Hunters being ''useless''.

Hunters on council are great as well. You might not have a full immunity but surely your healers are good enough to keep you alive with 50% + 15% damage reduction.

[Nightspear]

No kidding, that's just the law of probability. It has nothing to do with Hunters being ''useless''.

Hunters on council are great as well. You might not have a full immunity but surely your healers are good enough to keep you alive with 50% + 15% damage reduction.

We are pretty lazy so don't deal with frostbite. Smokebomb first (which rogues can, and let immunity/combat rez deal with others) And say hunters are great on council is pretty hilarious. You only really bring crap CC for spirits, you can't multi dot, you don't have a raid CD for Blanka dude overpowering. What exactly make hunters great? Even our damage that fight is laughable compared to cleavers/multi dotters, and thats all we can...

[Deleted]

You only really bring crap CC for spirits, you can't multi dot, you don't have a raid CD for Blanka dude overpowering.

Why not?
We can target switch to the spirits faster than most other classes and do a nice amount of multi-dot and cleave damage onto all bosses. Granted it's nothing like a Demonology Warlock with Lei-Shen's trinket, but one quick look at the logs should clearly show that they are the ones being broken.

[unclecreepy]

IMHO the problem keeps coming around that Blizzard gives hunters abilities that people exploit in PvP. PvP'ers cry about it, and hunters get nerved for PvP balance which then effects PvE and Blizzard just ignores that fact. The ongoing trend that Blizzard tries to balance PvP and ruins the enjoyment of PvE continues over and over and over. Every 'cool' ability that's added to the game ends up being nerfed or removed because of PvP.

[Kildragon]

IMHO the problem keeps coming around that Blizzard gives hunters abilities that people exploit in PvP. PvP'ers cry about it, and hunters get nerved for PvP balance which then effects PvE and Blizzard just ignores that fact. The ongoing trend that Blizzard tries to balance PvP and ruins the enjoyment of PvE continues over and over and over. Every 'cool' ability that's added to the game ends up being nerfed or removed because of PvP.

Only because hunters are probably the hardest class to design properly.

1) pets are not easy to design and balance around, especially when such a large portion of your dps is single target and melee only. Blink strike and stampede only served to further the problem.

2) you have all the benefits of being a ranged class without any of the drawbacks. Giving hunters AotF baseline was a horrible decision seeing how the only thing keeping you from never standing still was cobra/ss. Since movement is now a non factor for hunters and you are a ranged class, the only way to keep you from absolutely dominating is to make cleaving/multi-dotting your weakness.

3) you only have one cast time ability in cobra/ss ,unless you're mm of course, which leads to a lot of damage coming very rapidly. Hunters probably have the best 5 second burst in the game that doesn't have a positional requirement, doesn't require melee range and is all instant. And you have it all the time, the only thing you need for it is focus.

Overall, Hunters are probably the easiest class to make accidentally op and as such have been relegated to being average for the most part, in pve that is.

Now comes why you're so op in arenas.

1) Hunters are nearly impossible to counter. Melee can be counted by kiting. If you're a ranged class you can hit them when they can't hit you. Casters can be countered by interrupts. They need to cast to do damage. (Hint, why are frost mages so strong). You can't kite a hunter, and you can't interrupt them. If you can hit him, he can hit you.

2) What previously kept them in check was minimum range. Minimum range acted as sort of an interrupt but it didn't cripple them since they had few cast time spells and couldn't be locked out.

3) movement has no effect on hunters. They can literally chase you all match without losing any damage.

4) There is no smart positional play required for a hunter to unload on you. Casters need to be away from melee and ideally near LoS so they can't easily be CCed halfway through their cast. The only cast time hunters have is the one ability that does minimal damage. Again, previously held in check by minimum range and needing to activate Fox to be able to regen focus.

5) since hunters are balanced around no cleave/multi dot they are very front loaded.

To sum it up, you hit fast, you hit from anywhere, you can't be kited, you can't be interrupted, you can't be CCed while casting since you have no casts, you can't be shut down through minimum range, you're 100% mobile.

Can you see how these issues in pvp do need to get addressed which sadly does affect pve as well.

[Benggaul]

Can you see how these issues in pvp do need to get addressed which sadly does affect pve as well.

I honestly don't care what they nerf/change about hunter PvP, but the implied statement that changes to PvP must affect PvE is just silly. They've demonstrated numerous times in the past that they can make certain abilities react differently in a PvP scenario, so the fact that they don't carry on with this and make it so for all of the troublemaking abilities (for all classes, not just hunters) galls me. I completely recognize that Hunters are smacking people around like crazy in PvP and I fully understand why that needs changing. PvE, however, does not need to be affected by those changes.

[Ickabob]

Recent tweets from GC make me realize that he's more out of touch then we previously thought.

[Yuyn]

I particularly liked how they're happy with raid utility (every class except mages and hunters bring a unique cooldown: offensive, defensive, or both -- at least mages top meters, have Time Warp as a baseline, and give manacakes), and still think that Stampede has some sort of value as burst damage (it's an extra ~25k DPS while it's up, in high-end gear -- 'bout as much as a Dire Beast).

[Puerto]

Only because hunters are probably the hardest class to design properly.

1) pets are not easy to design and balance around, especially when such a large portion of your dps is single target and melee only. Blink strike and stampede only served to further the problem.

Warlocks are a pet class as well. They seem to have that class down pretty well.

2) you have all the benefits of being a ranged class without any of the drawbacks. Giving hunters AotF baseline was a horrible decision seeing how the only thing keeping you from never standing still was cobra/ss. Since movement is now a non factor for hunters and you are a ranged class, the only way to keep you from absolutely dominating is to make cleaving/multi-dotting your weakness.

Warlocks have pretty much the same mobility as well. Yeah, they get decreased movement speed, but it is only minimal. They they have amazing DPS and multi dot potential.

3) you only have one cast time ability in cobra/ss ,unless you're mm of course, which leads to a lot of damage coming very rapidly. Hunters probably have the best 5 second burst in the game that doesn't have a positional requirement, doesn't require melee range and is all instant. And you have it all the time, the only thing you need for it is focus.

This is true, but Hunters still need to face their target. Unlike Warlocks that do not if they want cast anything but their filler spell. On top of that, all our pets are melee, which brings up a whole new set of issues with pathing.

Overall, Hunters are probably the easiest class to make accidentally op and as such have been relegated to being average for the most part, in pve that is.

Not going to go into arena since I don't arena. Only thing I can say here is that PVE Hunters do get screwed over a lot because of the PVP Hunter.

/10 characters.

[Deleted]

Here's an idea switch Pack from Aspect to cooldown and make it better then Roar. Would make sense as we are most mobile range class and would give something unique.

[Slot]

Only because hunters are probably the hardest class to design properly.

1) pets are not easy to design and balance around, especially when such a large portion of your dps is single target and melee only. Blink strike and stampede only served to further the problem.

2) you have all the benefits of being a ranged class without any of the drawbacks. Giving hunters AotF baseline was a horrible decision seeing how the only thing keeping you from never standing still was cobra/ss. Since movement is now a non factor for hunters and you are a ranged class, the only way to keep you from absolutely dominating is to make cleaving/multi-dotting your weakness.

3) you only have one cast time ability in cobra/ss ,unless you're mm of course, which leads to a lot of damage coming very rapidly. Hunters probably have the best 5 second burst in the game that doesn't have a positional requirement, doesn't require melee range and is all instant. And you have it all the time, the only thing you need for it is focus.

Overall, Hunters are probably the easiest class to make accidentally op and as such have been relegated to being average for the most part, in pve that is.

Now comes why you're so op in arenas.

1) Hunters are nearly impossible to counter. Melee can be counted by kiting. If you're a ranged class you can hit them when they can't hit you. Casters can be countered by interrupts. They need to cast to do damage. (Hint, why are frost mages so strong). You can't kite a hunter, and you can't interrupt them. If you can hit him, he can hit you.

2) What previously kept them in check was minimum range. Minimum range acted as sort of an interrupt but it didn't cripple them since they had few cast time spells and couldn't be locked out.

3) movement has no effect on hunters. They can literally chase you all match without losing any damage.

4) There is no smart positional play required for a hunter to unload on you. Casters need to be away from melee and ideally near LoS so they can't easily be CCed halfway through their cast. The only cast time hunters have is the one ability that does minimal damage. Again, previously held in check by minimum range and needing to activate Fox to be able to regen focus.

5) since hunters are balanced around no cleave/multi dot they are very front loaded.

To sum it up, you hit fast, you hit from anywhere, you can't be kited, you can't be interrupted, you can't be CCed while casting since you have no casts, you can't be shut down through minimum range, you're 100% mobile.

Can you see how these issues in pvp do need to get addressed which sadly does affect pve as well.

And 100% Blizzards fault for not making pvp and pve separated with different abilities. These problems are with many classes not just hunters.

[Kildragon]

Yes different abilities for pvp and pve might work for some issues. How do you solve the issues i outlined above with such an approach though? Again, hunters can't be interrupted, have almost all instants, don't have min range anymore and have unlimited mobility. Should steady/cobra be able to be interrupted and lock hunters out from using their abilities? Should abilities other than steady/cobra have a cast time? Should min range be brought back for pvp only? Should steady/cobra not be able to be cast while moving in pvp?

It's easy to just echo the sentiment that abilities need just have different pvp/pve versions and everything would be fixed. You have to think about that though. The core of the problem is with the very design of the class. Unless you change how hunters play in pvp and pve completely you can't just have different versions of spells.

At what point does a hunter not even play like a hunter anymore?

[Kalcheus]

New note in Patch Notes:

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• General
  
  • Explosive Trap had its overall damage decreased by 30%. Proportionately, more damage has been removed from the initial damage than the periodic effect.

Not much of a surprise because Explosive Shot was potentially a rotational shot when removed from the CD with Black Arrow... but of course, AOE damaged just got borked.

[Juurikkala]

Lollipop for the one who knows which ability they nerf next? Maybe something from MM, it has been too untouched lately

[Kildragon]

You're getting explosive shot and explosive trap mixed up. Plus explosive trap isn't even used much right now. The top hunters on fights like tortos use black arrow on cd and ignore exp trap.

[Kurgosh]

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

Yep, more compensation announced today. Explosive trap nerfed by 30%, because our AoE was just too good. I guess maybe compared to enhance shammies?

[SL1200]

Nerfed again......but don't worry hunters just shut up and be happy.

[eldritchforeshadow]

I am not hopeful that Blizzard will realize their mistake that they are nerfing Hunters into the ground for the sake of PVP which will affect our PVE performance dramatically. Sorry if I lack any hope of them reversing the massive damage Blizz will do to Hunters, but I would rather remain negative just in case the changes become a reality when the patch goes live so I don't get too upset lol.

Will I have to shelf my Hunter? Will my Hunter no longer be useful or have great dps in raids?