No more deadzone is HUGE for a lot of hunters.
and the tier talents as they stand now, give hunters amazing utility.
but things will obviously change.
I play PriestHD at the ~2500 level so I'm not just blowing smoke up peoples asses with speculation or stuff I read that I'm gonna repeat.Hunters are the most underpowered class atm is all I hear. Yet a team with a hunter in won the Blizzcon Arena Tournament. If that hunter can do it, everyone can do it.
Hunters are decent atm. Slightly OP in BGs and hard to play in arena. But a class that is hard to play =/= underpowered.
This is what was at play:
Anyone above 2200 knows how much comp comes into play in Arena and even more so at moderately high levels such as the 2500-2700 range and even more so again at the 2800-R1 levels. The difference between a 2500 team and a 2800 are HUGE but I've seen teams loose to that huge of a gap simply due to being hard countered.
Hunters are not completely useless but still they are not anywhere near to competitive. In order to get to the bracket where they face teams they hard counter thay have to get past all the Meleecleaves that counter them which are prevalent in the lower bracket 2k-2700 range.
Hunters also have to ride on the backs of OP classes e.g 4.2 DK's PHD and 4.1 KFC. Now neither DK nor Hunters are OP but PHD does COMPLETELY hard counter almost EVERY team at Blizzcon.
#1 Hunters are a NATURAL counter to casters in general and Mage's specifically.
#2 DK are a NATURAL counter to EVERY caster and the best equipped class to kill healers.
(EVERY SINGLE team other than OMG had a Lock and a Shaman. 2 had Mages and 1 had a SPriest, There were 2 DK's, 1 Rogue, 1 War, 1 Hunter.)
#3 Every team having a Lock and a Shaman automatically put 2 Natural counters to the Lock and the bane of all healers on EVERY TEAM In the tournament.
#4 The Spriest and 2 MLS teams were at a complete disadvantage.
#5 Both the Lock and the DK from the Shadowcleave are weak vs PHYSICAL damage. MM hunter + Enraged pet = Shit tons of physical damage on top of large Necro strikes.
#6 The RLS and MLS neither one made it far into the tourney but in neither case did those 2 teams hard counter PHD. If they had been Meleecleaves then they would have destroyed the DK most likely but would have never made it to the tourney because of how bad Meleecleaves are atm.
#7 OMG FUCKING OUTPLAYED EVERYONE AT THE TOURNEY. So even if they didn't hard counter 2/3rds of the teams at the tournament they still would have gone far due to skill alone. They probably wouldn't have won simply because Arena is highly synergy and comp based and if there were more natural counters to the PHD (meleecleaves) we would have seen a different ballgame.
hunters are definitely not underpowered atm, neither overpowered.
many of you ppl make it sound like hunters are far worse than others, but they aren't.
Imo the only thing the removal of minimum range will accomplish is lower the skill cap.
I'm more terrified of the IMBA nature of BM hunters with readiness. Double bestial wraths will rape face.
To be fair, it won't make that much of a difference, because if a hunter is in melee range of something, they are putting themselves at risk.. Lets use a warrior vs hunter situation.. just because hunters can now attack in melee range doesn't mean they are going to BE in melee range, why would you WANT to be in melee range of a melee class? Yes it means that if the warrior is all up in the hunters face, the hunter can still attack you, but they aren't going to stay there for long because won't want to get beat on. And the minimum melee range isn't an issue with casters anyway. So personally I don't think it's going to cause much of a problem. Any hunter that stays within melee range of something just because they now can, should re roll lol.
Other classes will have to be wary of it, but hunters will still want to be at range. It "seems" that we're getting some interesting defensives that may make them seem a bit OP, time will tell however.
Minimal range is jsut 1 of many hunter issues in pvp...some of them are getting fixed like self ehaling (spirit bond twice as good and talent to give disengage 15% heal) but there is alot of other issues like:
- no dmg reduction cooldown
- no protection against dots
- no instant ress for pet
- Freezing trap needs rework along with trap launcher
- difficulty with regeneration of focus
- Fox aspect should be integrated with hawk
- too easy to be trained by melee
There is few more issues but i belive you get my point. There is much more to do with hunter to get him to respectable level in pvp. Some kind of self heal and removal of minimum range is a start but there is still alot to be done.
People complaining about the fact that hunters cant be interrupted while casters can... Have you missed the fact that casters barely cast anymore in this game? their instant cast arsenal is so huge they dont need to cast...
Overpowered? You mean balanced like all the other ranged classes currently can?
this man speaks the truth. people confused underpowered with hard to play.. A hunter with full mastery of all abilities and complete class knowledge are rare but the ones that exist will beat everything. especially with all the benefits of good pet management. So hunters have the tools to be good just alot of kids dont have the skills to use them. As proven at blizzcon a master hunter can do anything.
im more concerned with the new skills in the talent trees if they stick. Things like 15% health when you disengage coupled with talents that shorten the cooldown (crouching tiger hidden chimera) and then readiness. Means intense self healing. went from no self healing to alot. But everything is too early to judge.
OP? nah more like balanced.
want to know the strat to every melee cleave team vs a hunter? train hunter. /win. get points.
Last edited by Coalex; 2011-10-24 at 02:21 AM. Reason: typo
I have a feeling Blizzard already thought of this and has an idea of how to keep it from being overpowered.
HUnters have a loooong way to go until they are OP at anything in PvP. Before you get too upset about the changes to Hunters making them OP, you might want to peruse the changes to Melee and casters (**cough**Mage**cough**) which will MORE than enable them to dominate.
Burst + Control uber alles.
Besides, you should already know that if the Hunter class succeeds en masse, massive nerfs are sure to follow.