Classes Q&A Series: Hunter

[xSaix]

Agreed... However, on the bright side, most Death Knights and Rogues don't know wtf they are doing, seeing as all the little kids and noobs on their hunters decided to reroll the OP class instead.

When Im in a BG I like to plant a Freezing trap at my back to keep any rogues and bay, and if any melee come at me, I simple run behind the trap, and hope they don't resist it.

But when a DK gets a hold of me... with chains of ice and Death Grip, unless someone else is on him, its gg... BUT WAIT!!! Disengage! because Death Grip is on a Cooldown, because if you can't kill a DK within 40-1min while kiting him, YOU SUCK.

When in doubt, mouse turn and DISENGAGE! keep a trap down when you land and run the other fucking way, Hunters have a longer range than a DKs Icy Chains OR Death Grip.

Yes Im sorry to say this, but you have to have a brain to play a hunter well... it's true, it's true...

A bad DK death grips me before I disengage. A good one chains of ice me and runs over, and chains again if I escape from it. If I disengage, THEN he grabs me.

The point is, a fantastic hunter against a fantastic ret paladin or DK (if they exist) would have no contest. Hunters are broken in PvP, and there's no two ways about it.

[Prinsesa]

That paints an incomplete picture, however, and ignores one fact that makes ES drastically outstrip AS if you have access to it:
In one cooldown, Arcane Shot deals that damage once, and has one chance to crit.
In one cooldown, Explosive Shot deals that damage three times over 2 sec, and each of those three times has its own independent chance to crit.

Be that as it may, there's still a number at which Arcane Shot is better than Explosive Shot. It's a high number (roughly a 180% buff excluding TNT and Sniper Training), but there's definitely a point of inflection nonetheless, which reflects what GC implied.

[matiwariat]

blizzard does some good stuff from time to time. not always but they have some good days. i think that they dont want to really work on mana issues since they might be working on a new system so why would they work on mana for like 2 patches and then jump into the new system. thi swould look like a lot of wasted work and hunters will start qqing that they wasted time on fixing mana when they had a new system coming.

sor for typos if any

[rokkitan]

I wish they made pets have a selection of family skills which are more generic but named after the pet, so each pet could have either a dps skill, a root skill, an interrupt skill or an aoe tanking skill (add a few more as desired; stun/). Example: a cat could choose from one of the following: rake(dps), grab(root), maim(interrupt), and flurry of claws(aoe tanking), while a spider could have posion bite(dps), web(root), web strangle(interrupt) and posion spray(aoe tanking). Then you could choose the pet from looks and spec it to do what you want. The talent tree could be used for this and we wouldn't have cunning/ferocity/tenacity trees/families. It would also make it much easier on the developers when introducing new pet families. Exotic pets could still have some exotic skills in addition. But I'd still want my cat to have prowl, but not sure how to integrate it without making it an exotic..

When taking about pets; I wish they made pets have the hunter's level, and rather used happiness as a barrier to tame and throw away pets. This means that happiness would increase much more slowly. As it it now you can be so lucky to tame a pet at your own level or if not you have to level it, thus reducing the freedom of choice. Happiness loss is also something I'd love to get rid of, as I feel the pet talents and the glyph is just a band aid on a bad mechanic. Perhaps we could then be able to feed them to heal them instead.

tl;dr: Let us choose pets from looks, and then choose skills for it's intended role.

Removing consumable arrows and thus making dropped ammo have meaning will be nice. Hopefully it's work like idols/librams/sigils.. The old world has several ammo from boss drops and a few quests, which will then be usable for a leveling hunter. It'll be interesting to see what they implement, as they did many great changes for WotLK for hunters/pets.

[Ekoor]

Great Q&A, really...

So, instead of actually addressing any of the problems that have been bugging hunters for months (Esp. damage dealing. No, it's not "good", as he said), they're trying to throw the new, fancy Poison Ammo (or whatever) and a possible "strong melee attack" at us, as if we needed yet another situational lackluster ability. Typical.
The pet survivability bit was especially ludicrous. As was stated, faster pet ress would mean an even "more fragile" pet... Well, their health can't go any lower than it already is...

I honestly have no idea where they're going with this class, and the Q&A was supposed to answer that. Oh well.

[Khahla]

Classes Q&A Series: Hunter

What we really need is a system where certain PvE attacks just don’t hurt the pet (maybe they can’t set off Mimiron mines for instance).

Since when do pets set off mimiron mines?

[Rocktard]

Q: It was stated that we had intended to remove consumable ammunition from the game for patch 3.1.0, However, due to certain functionality not being ready in time, the change was put on hold. Is there any new information in regards to the functionality of non-consumable ammunition, and also a possible estimate as to when hunters may expect to see these changes implemented?

A: From a technical standpoint, what happened is that the quiver is considered a bag just like other bags on the character but also, most critically, those in the bank. In order to remove ammo we would have to move the location of all of a character’s bank slots on the database that stores all of the World of Warcraft characters, which would be a risky thing to do in the middle of an expansion, and could result in “missing stuff” issues if something went wrong. It was just one of those last-minute show-stoppers.

We still want to make ammo more of a gear choice than a consumable. We’re not sure if this would be as simple as getting the 125 dps arrows to upgrade your 120 dps arrows, or if you would do things like swap between your fire and poison arrows??? but that kind of thing is definitely on the table.
I’m not sure when we can do it right. It’s not going to be for 3.2 unfortunately.

Maybe I lost something in translation, but what is the hard part? They managed to change the rogue poisons before WotlK launched aswell. What is the difference compared to the arrows?

[Khahla]

I think he's implying that to change the ammo they were planning on deleting or changing old existing ammo including those that might have been in quivers in peoples banks...
but god knows why this is such a showstopper, why not just leave old ammo? It would be subpar to the new stuff (or what's the point right) and would vendor or shoot itself out of existence...

All you really need to know is it's a grade-A selection of classic Ghostcrawler Bull$#!%.

I spent about 180g on ammo last night : /

[Selebrian]

Q: Are there any long term plans to possibly removing the need for hunters to rely on a different resource system then mana?

A: I hate to do this to you, but this is a great BlizzCon question. For these Q&As, we’d like to keep the focus on each class’s current status and short-term plans, but at BlizzCon we’ll be happy to go into some more detail on our long-term vision for them.

This is intriguing so possibly in the next expansion Hunters may not even be using mana? I would have expected a flat out "No, we have no plans to change hunters resource system". But he didn't so ... very interesting.

[Renegaid]

Q: On the topic of hunter ammunition, currently, it becomes quite expensive for hunters to purchase Mammoth Cutters and Saronite Razorheads, especially given how much many hunters use in a given week. Are there any plans to reduce the cost, by potentially looking into the materials required to craft both types of ammunition?

A: The problem with upgrading hunter ammo currently is how we work the progression. We don’t want to drop ammo on bosses for what I hope are obvious reasons so long as they are consumed. We need to have ammo improve as other gear improves, however, or the hunter overall starts to fall behind. Therefore there has to be some barrier that stops freshly leveled hunters from getting the best ammo while letting cutting-edge hunters procure it. In Burning Crusade, we handled this through a reputation grind, but it still wasn’t a very satisfying answer. In Wrath of the Lich King, we went with Engineer-crafted ammo and more recently changed the way ranged weapons scaled so that they would keep improving even if the ammo did not.

For 3.2 we lowered the cost of the ammo quite a bit -- only 4 gold for a stack to manufacture. If you were paying 50 gold a night, that should drop to say 16 gold a night. Long-term this won’t be a problem because arrows won’t be consumed.

Why not just make hunter Ammo like it was in Diablo 2 (with javs, arrows, bolts, etc.)? Make an epic or blue quality stack that drops off dungeon/raid bosses and that you can repair at a cost that scales with item quality. Hunters carry one stack and repair it just like the rest of their gear. You would have to make them stack in very large quantities and repair often but it wouldn't have to be uber expensive.

[Macint]

Guess I came in a bit too late to add a decent point what hadn't been said already :-[

But pretty much, this Q&A was terrible. And I don't want to think about hunters getting mana swapped with some other thing... energy? Rage? Hunter magic power? Theres no need to swap out our attack rescource with something - honestly, just sort out the MM mana problem. (And to you people who just say "theres a problem with your raid if you go oom", some people don't have the utter luxury of perfectly formed raids, and do more 10 mans instead, where the ultimate group set up isn't possible...)

[Rilgon]

(And to you people who just say "theres a problem with your raid if you go oom", some people don't have the utter luxury of perfectly formed raids, and do more 10 mans instead, where the ultimate group set up isn't possible...)

Even the lack of Judgment of Wisdom can cause MM to go woefully low on mana.

Master Marksman needs to add "In addition, you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain 2% of your base mana every time Piercing Shots does periodic damage." just like the new change to Empowered Fire for Fire Mages. Voila, we have our own self-powered JoW that keeps us afloat and out of Viper on bosses without mana bars.

Or hell, they could let us Viper Sting mobs without mana bars, that would do a world of good.

[Governator]

The prospects of how these changes could affect PvP intrigue me. Particularly, the ammunition changes seem they could add a distinctive edge vs. certain classes. Personally, I'd like to see a mage-esque effect on a particular type of ammunition (say Frost Arrows or Bullets) that has a chance to proc a minor slow on the target. This would give us more time in PvP to deal significant damage to an approaching melee, without guaranteeing we could kite melee indefinitely like some other changes might cause.

Personally, I think the nerf to Frost Trap not working on targets immune to slows/snares was a bit unfair on Blizzard's part, given the nature of traps (i.e. the target has to walk over it). I think either reverting this back to the old mechanic or implementing a new mechanic with similar results would go a long way to giving hunters a bit more survivability against melee (which, to be honest, is the most difficult thing to deal with in PvP). This would be both through still allowing us a means to kite once the immunity effect wears off, and allowing us to apply enough pressure to melee to make them play more defensively. Or perhaps even allow us an upper-tier talent that reduces stun durations on the hunter, since this is typically when a hunter gets clobbered.

I can see where some people want pets to be able to spec into any tree or an identical ability available to all pets, but I can also see where from a design standpoint, that this would kill the uniqueness of pet families. I'm not sure what a great solution to this would be. The same is true for implementing a system for the ammunition that mirrors rogue poisons. Blizzard doesn't want us to be rogues with a bow/gun.

I also can agree that MM desperately needs something to improve its mana efficiency, or at least reduce its reliance on target debuffs.

[[iTG] Owlcapwn]

perhaps even a single punishing attack on a cooldown before the hunter Disengaged or whatever. This would be one of those things that helped hunters feel more different than actual magic casters, and might make them care about melee weapons as more than stat sticks. Additional feedback from the community on this sort of thing would be appreciated.

maybe like an additional buff we get, that stacks, for every time we ranged crit, a 2%-5% buff stacks on us for chance that a raptor strike has to crit, then have another ability that procs after a successful raptor strike crit to do some nice melee dmg (w/ a stun / or an effect which complies to a poison currently on target, similar to chimera shot) of some sort that has a justified CD on it before disengaging.

that would make me not be as afraid to run up to a warrior/rogue once in a while.

[Moonwulf]

I am always around the top dps in raids as a hunter, I think they need to change some things to make some things make more sense, and some things just do more damage (Serpent Sting?), but overall I am not dissatisfied with Hunters in PvE. Only thing I would really like added is some talent that converts attack power to spell power, so your serpent sting/black arrow/magical shots actually get more of a buff, as well as pets not dying 5 seconds into every boss fight that has aoe damage.

In Battlegrounds, Hunters are amazing because there is so much open space and their ranged abilities make them about the best BG class. However, in arena, it is a complete joke to be a Hunter. In 2v2 especially, it is virtually impossible as a hunter to get very far. Seems like most classes have slows and most teams are melee + healer. If a hunter is slowed and the other team's healer runs away the entire fight and uses LOS tricks so that you can never hit them, as well as the fact that you can't shoot the melee because they are too close makes it just completey frustrating. Melee dps can run around pillars all day chasing healers and keep hitting them, while hunters, having to keep a certain range can sometimes never even get a shot off on people running arround pillars. And don't even get me started on the dalaran sewers map, let's play hide behind the boxes all day while the hunter can't shoot you because they are either LOS or too close to the person hiding behind them.

"Moving feeling like a penalty" makes sense ... if it was consistant. Melee players can run around all day and keep hitting you and it is not a penalty to them. I just don't really get it. So either give hunters the ability to shoot and move at the same time, or give them worth while melee abilities that can actually help. Something that could really help balance things out as well would be some type of knockback ability, somewhat like a boomkin's typhoon. Hunters are ranged, so when people are too close it is bad .... so give them an ability to force the opponent backwards so you can actually shoot them. Disengage is a great ability in pvp, but honestly is not even close to enough. You give melee dps abilities like death grip and a whole bunch of slowing effects so they can keep swinging at you, but you give hunters nothing so that they can consistantly keep shooting people. Hunters just need some upgrades to be balanced in arena.

Sorry, one more little annoyance. Hunters have so many abilities to deal with Rogues in PvP, yet almost none of them work very well at all. Hunter's Mark is good, but they can get right out of it by cloaking or vanishing or whatever they do, so it is basically useless against the one thing it is supposed to be used for. Flare is ok ... if a rogue walks right on top of it while it is there for its 20 seconds, otherwise they will sap you from out of its range. Track Hidden? Wow that works doesn't it.

All I ask for is balance and abilities that do what they are supposed to do.

[Donkz]

I don't know why they can't make a talent tree for for pvp/arena. When you try to balance PVE and PVP it's never going to work very well. You take take from bob and give to bill kinda thing. Apples and oranges. I think a talent tree aimed at pvp/arena would make this balancing alot easier then the way they have it now.

[Antillar]

Or hell, they could let us Viper Sting mobs without mana bars, that would do a world of good.

How much would it tick for though?

[nodwas]

I think that this Q&A was about as good as the rest of them. None of them I have seen so far were blueprints for classes, they all seemed to be "Here are some issues we noticed people complain about a lot". Ghostcrawler is one guy with probably a good size group of guys/gals working under him. He is the face of blame, he takes a lot of flak. I don't think its fair to say that he hates hunters or doesnt understand the problems. He's the messenger and most people I've seen so far want to be Leonidas.
Ive been reading the countless posts so far and Ive noticed a few trends in peoples comments other than the trash talk.
-Hunters shouldn't be rogues, they shouldn't use energy..etc
-Hunters should be rogues, they should have poison, and better mobility
-I agree with both...Mana is fine, I play SV, I don't seem to have to many issues. I'm sure MM and BM do go OOM a little more, I will have to try them and find out maybe the mana regen talents need a buff cause I know all 3 trees have them, maybe volly shouldn't cost a ton.
-I like the idea of hunter poison it's...huntery.
-Aspect not dazing you would be nice but probably OP since you can leave it on and go to town on people.
-I think the signature shots are nice but i feel like they tie you too much into a tree how good is SV without explosive shot, I think its about 1/3 of my damage in raids. Whats marks without Chimaera. That trend doesnt flow into BM, or it does but not nearly to the same extent.
-I like the idea of a spirit wolf like ability for BM it seems like that could integrate nicely but not be reliant on your pet, because if your pet dies you just loss 1/2 your dps.
-I would like to see pet talents simplified. One tree with a lot of choices instead of 3 seperate pet classes. The theme as been simplify and unify. Pet uniqueness is disappearing all pets are becoming equal but some are being left behind. I think it would be fun to see all hunters using a variety of pets without gimping their dps. So make all pets basically the same. One big tree lots of talents, choose wisely. Then the cookie cutter pet game dissappears and everyone has a pet then WANT not one they have to have.
I think the class is decent, I think a lot of people bring there personal faults to the forums to complain out things that they probably have a lot more personal control of than they realize. I think its better to look back and see where we have come from, survival as a melee spec WTF