"you're a hunter, you play the easiest class in the game"

[Feanoro]

If you define skill as pressing buttons in order, sure, but you probably also whine about button removal in WoD lowering the skill cap. Smashing out a rotation is not and has never been skillful. Padding, especially wasted dps like AoE on Klaxxi, isn't skill either.

Skill comes in via:
- kiting, trapping, what/when to tranq/silence... i.e. anything to help things not go to crap/recover from going to crap
- situational awareness and prediction
- focus management

[Illana]

I guess it's all relative to what you consider to be "good"

[Deleted]

People are quick to judge hunter as one of the easiest classes because they don't factor in that the skillcap lies in the focus management and 'number of shots cast vs. focus gained'-output.

[Pengalor]

After leveling Warlock for a bit, I think it's fair to say that we hunters definitely have it a bit easier. However, most of our skill cap imo comes from using every trick in our toolbag, something I see a lot of hunters just not caring about. Then, of course, there's the highest level of play where min/maxing and having a flawless rotation are skillful as well.

[pill8w]

TBH though, does any class actually take skill these days?

And considering they are lowering the skill cap for a lot of classes come WoD, what class won't be easy?

This is coming from a destro lock where everything boils down to how well you can line up your spells with your trinkets and how lucky you are.

This man wins, OP go home.

[Pengalor]

TBH though, does any class actually take skill these days?

And considering they are lowering the skill cap for a lot of classes come WoD, what class won't be easy?

This is coming from a destro lock where everything boils down to how well you can line up your spells with your trinkets and how lucky you are.

This is true. My friend mains a warlock and is so damn disappointed that DoT screenshots are essentially going to be gone because he liked affliction and he says it's going to be boring as hell without watching procs.

[Alvarie]

All classes are easy to play.

All classes are difficult to play well.

[Deleted]

Isnt this true for like half of the classes in the game tho?

it unfortunately it is

but hunters just have zero to watch out for

they can never be interrupted or denied uptime trough kiting, all their cc is instant, they can do everything while moving etc..

[Dracodraco]

Not if your paying attention to your procs and CDs, if your blowing a rotation of MB, SW:P, MF and DP and paying attention to nothing else, yeah...easy

But then again, all classes are easy right?

Every single dps spec has to keep track of procs and CDs (wait which cds does Spriest have again? Shadowfiend?) and make sure to line them up. It's nothing specific to the spec itself, but rather, something specific to high end raiding. If you want to argue that shadow is hard because of that, I've got a few pages of hunter theory around proc/CD usage and focus fire etc I need to write up and send you to show you how "simple" hunter is.

[The One Percent]

All classes are easy in WoW. Anyone who thinks their class takes any real level of skill (outside of perhaps the highest level of pvp, and even then) isn't as good as they think they are.

[Baracuda]

Isnt this true for like half of the classes in the game tho?

Sure the difference between good and bad has decreased for everyone but there were so many things hunters had to watch out for and manage before, now it's almost nothing.

[Delekii]

People are quick to judge hunter as one of the easiest classes because they don't factor in that the skillcap lies in the focus management and 'number of shots cast vs. focus gained'-output.

Yes, they do.

Number of shots cast vs. focus gained is irrelevant. If you never reach 100 focus, cast all relevant abilities on cooldown, and don't drop any relevant buffs, you are getting about 90% to 95% of the damage of hunter. Only Marksman has any need to worry about timing focus regen at all thanks to the haste buff, and that certainly isn't difficult to keep up 100% of the time.

The other 5-10% comes from lining up cooldowns with buffs. Even then, cooldown management doesn't have a massive effect on dps, and using dps cooldowns "wrong" will often lose you very little - bestial wrath because it is a short cooldown and delaying it often costs as much as lining it up gains you, and rapid fire because it is not a particularly strong dps cooldown in the first place (as compared with, say, dark soul on a destro lock, where mis-use can cost you multiple 10's of percents of DPS).

That's why hunter is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, class to play well, especially in a PvE environment. There is little to no mobility cost, and there is comparatively little loss for misplaying after a certain point. If you follow the above criteria, you are most of the way to achieving max dummy dps, and certainly further than most dps classes.

[Illana]

and how easy is it to manage your focus so it never caps but you also have enough for all your important abilities on cd?

far sight harder compared to mana or energy that's for sure. The only other comparable resource in difficulty would be rage.

[Dracodraco]

Yes, they do.

Number of shots cast vs. focus gained is irrelevant. If you never reach 100 focus, cast all relevant abilities on cooldown, and don't drop any relevant buffs, you are getting about 90% to 95% of the damage of hunter. Only Marksman has any need to worry about timing focus regen at all thanks to the haste buff, and that certainly isn't difficult to keep up 100% of the time.

The other 5-10% comes from lining up cooldowns with buffs. Even then, cooldown management doesn't have a massive effect on dps, and using dps cooldowns "wrong" will often lose you very little - bestial wrath because it is a short cooldown and delaying it often costs as much as lining it up gains you, and rapid fire because it is not a particularly strong dps cooldown in the first place (as compared with, say, dark soul on a destro lock, where mis-use can cost you multiple 10's of percents of DPS).

That's why hunter is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, class to play well, especially in a PvE environment. There is little to no mobility cost, and there is comparatively little loss for misplaying after a certain point. If you follow the above criteria, you are most of the way to achieving max dummy dps, and certainly further than most dps classes.

And yet, focus is by far the hardest resource in the game to manage (only really competed with by DK's rune and RP system), because you are in charge of doing it. Energy? It ticks up at a constant, even rate. No way outside of major cds to change this. Mana? It's not even a concern for casters. Admittedly I have never really gotten into warriors, so I'm not sure how rage actually plays out, so that one could go either way.
Also, 10% dmg by mis-using Dark soul for destro? Are you shitting me? Dark soul isn't exactly a "strong" cooldown either for destro (it's crit - the least valueable stat), and by no means will a mis-use of DS (say, outside of immerseus trinket proc) end up losing you 40-50K dps (let alone +100K as your "multiple tens" imply). As long as you have a full emberbar to drop during the soul, and thus take advantage of it, you'll be getting a significant return on using it.

All this being said, warlocks has a single cooldown to look out for - dark soul - and you just instantly pop it when your immerseus trinket procs, as the ICD on immerseus is 2 minutes and DS cooldown is 2 minutes. Couldn't get much easier to not "fuck up", really.
Meanwhile hunters can lose out on multiple uses of BW/RF if they hold on to them for too long, which means that you have to be ready to use a CD every half minute or so, without overlapping them if possible, without overlapping RF and focus fire, and while considering stampede (your one MAJOR cd) and trinket procs etc.

Yea, ok. You might want to try and play a fucking hunter if you think *destro locks* are more punishing/harder. Destro locks are watered down hunters with better damage, sorry to say - they have the same focus mechanic as hunters does (embers = focus), it's just roughly four times as slow, which means planning around it is incredibly easy comparably. Let me paint you the picture of a successfull destro lock:

Keep immolate up (pandemic = lol), preferably with procs for extra power.
Keep conflag on cd (faster incin/chaos bolts).
Incinerate as a filler.
Unload chaos bolts when you have trinket procs. If no trinket procs, sit at 2.5 embers, and unload a chaosbolt everytime you hit 3 embers (and thus get the crit bonus from your set piece).

You get the one cd that I already pointed out, and you use that whenever your PBoI procs. GG. Done.

[Azortharion]

But FnB is so much harder to manage than Beast Cleave.

[Puffdaddy]

Hunters are not the easiest class in the game, they require an amount of skill just like every class in the game.

[Azortharion]

Hunters are not the easiest class in the game, they require an amount of skill just like every class in the game.

I think the discussion is what takes the least skill.

[BurnetRhoades]

imo assassination takes the least amount of skill. You only have to track 1 dot. SnD refreshes every evenv so you don't even notice it's there. Other than that it's mut mut mut mut mut, maybe throw a dispatch in there if you're lucky

For raiding it's long been "the fat kid" spec.

[Delekii]

And yet, focus is by far the hardest resource in the game to manage (only really competed with by DK's rune and RP system), because you are in charge of doing it. Energy? It ticks up at a constant, even rate. No way outside of major cds to change this. Mana? It's not even a concern for casters. Admittedly I have never really gotten into warriors, so I'm not sure how rage actually plays out, so that one could go either way.
Also, 10% dmg by mis-using Dark soul for destro? Are you shitting me? Dark soul isn't exactly a "strong" cooldown either for destro (it's crit - the least valueable stat), and by no means will a mis-use of DS (say, outside of immerseus trinket proc) end up losing you 40-50K dps (let alone +100K as your "multiple tens" imply). As long as you have a full emberbar to drop during the soul, and thus take advantage of it, you'll be getting a significant return on using it.

The fact that it is actively regenerated means literally nothing in terms of difficulty. There is no wrong time to use it provided you don't reach 100 energy and you don't delay a cooldown being used. Your description of the cost of misusing dark soul (and mis-valuing of a crit buff on a class that derives a huge portion of its damage from a very small relative portion of execution time that directly benefits in a very LARGE pure damage increase from crit) implies that you actually have very little idea as to its proper usage.

All this being said, warlocks has a single cooldown to look out for - dark soul - and you just instantly pop it when your immerseus trinket procs, as the ICD on immerseus is 2 minutes and DS cooldown is 2 minutes. Couldn't get much easier to not "fuck up", really.

As noted; see above.

Meanwhile hunters can lose out on multiple uses of BW/RF if they hold on to them for too long, which means that you have to be ready to use a CD every half minute or so, without overlapping them if possible, without overlapping RF and focus fire, and while considering stampede (your one MAJOR cd) and trinket procs etc.

Like I said; the difference between misusing them and literally using them all on cooldown is almost negligable in terms of effect on dps. You stated exactly why this is the case in your post - the short cooldown of bestial wrath means that delaying a cooldown often causes you to lose dps more than simply using it ON cooldown, and the relative lack of cooldown offered by rapid fire means it is somewhat hard to misuse it in a way that causes dps loss - again, definitely less than if you fail to use it the maximum number of times possible in a given fight.

Yea, ok. You might want to try and play a fucking hunter if you think *destro locks* are more punishing/harder. Destro locks are watered down hunters with better damage, sorry to say - they have the same focus mechanic as hunters does (embers = focus), it's just roughly four times as slow, which means planning around it is incredibly easy comparably. Let me paint you the picture of a successfull destro lock:

Keep immolate up (pandemic = lol), preferably with procs for extra power.
Keep conflag on cd (faster incin/chaos bolts).
Incinerate as a filler.
Unload chaos bolts when you have trinket procs. If no trinket procs, sit at 2.5 embers, and unload a chaosbolt everytime you hit 3 embers (and thus get the crit bonus from your set piece).

You get the one cd that I already pointed out, and you use that whenever your PBoI procs. GG. Done.

Again, the total number of cooldowns or macro style of play does not contribute to the difficulty of the spec beyond a certain point.

If you hit every cooldown ON cooldown on a hunter, and keep the focus bar below 100%, while casting cobra shot in between cooldowns, you will do the vast majority of damage you are capable of, even while ignoring procs and not lining up cooldowns.

If you hit every cooldown ON cooldown on a destro lock, you will cast a large proportion of your chaos bolts largely unbuffed, and do a HUGE amount less than your maximum potential damage.

Add to this the discrepancy of movement - hunter is easier than destro lock to maximise damage on.

[BurnetRhoades]

maybe so but combat is that much harder

You definitely have more to keep track of as Combat. You have more in your bag. Is it "harder"? It's more and "harder" without being "hard". It has more depth and more versatility than two moves unless you get a proc, just sitting there on the ass of the boss.