I'll just list the issues and share my thoughts on how to fix broken hunter mechanics, without asking for direct damage dealing buffs. It must be obvious by now that something is wrong with the class, when the great majority of players chooses to play as BM. Some switch to SV for AOE fights (extremely dominant performance), while only those who lack up to date class knowledge play as Marksman, which is weakest performing, maybe not in PVP but definately in PVE.
Hunters are severe victim of neglect, suffering from terrible scaling and bad design, where they tend to perform best out of any class in the first tier of any expansion (last 3 exp) and start to miserably fall behind other classes (case of clunky mechanics in PVP and bad scaling in PVE). We satrt of allmighty and powerful, receive nerfs, and in the last patch of the expansion we get long overdue bandaid fixes.
- first weeks on MOP PVP - hunter OP without understanding what exactly is making us so powerful (stampede doing too much damage in pvp) - nevermind - get nerfed allaround for it
- powershot missing or not doing damage - just watch the video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=qOFhmb1yQ3s - new tooltip added on PTR adding how it can miss against moving targets (just lazy or negligent?)
- recent aspect of the hawk and serpent sting damage buff - very welcome but has shortcoming of its' own in the long run, it likely won't last as much and it incredibly discriminates MM and Bm in favor of SV AOE damage.
I'll continue with the talents and specialisation tree flaws;
- squishy pets in pvp, while a great % of total damage comes directly from them
- glyph of mending and glyph of mend pet (2 different, just combine them already?)
- glyph of stampede design fail, while it worked great with 4 spirit beast copies, back before their spirit mend healing was nerfed by 75% it was fine, now no hunter in their right mind would use 5 same pets while ignoring the benefits of 4 different families, and their buffs/debuffs/special abilities like mortal strike and disarm
- stampede, dire beast, blink strike, murder of crows and lynx rush scaling for additional damage through BM mastery, meaning they do more damage than as any other specialisation
- blink strike talent design, scaling 600% normal pet damage only? pet autoattack damage doesn't scale well, scale it off a percentage of hunter ranged weapon damage (final figure)
- aspects became obsolete when you allowed us to cast focus regen shots in them, aspect of beast was removed (was fun for flag before the FC became visable on map), aspect of wild removed along with player magical resistance stat, and cheetah is obsolete as is it not used for travel that much and many classes have up to 25% or more base movement speed buffs baked into their basic design, make somethign fun out of it - swimming speed increase?
- eagle eye is fun, give us eyes of the beast back (but make pet unable to attack - remember duel ganking at 1% hp) - warlocks still have eye of kilrogg, don't they?
- feed pet spell obsolete, get rid of completely or make it fun
- focus fire spell is bad, why take away pet haste for player haste? not fun - at some point players ignore it completely, and due to scaling issues they will start using it more with later tiers.
- kill command spell and pathing issues - make the pet leap to their target rather than charging, it would bridge the problems with Y axis in PVP especially - copy the druid spell for animation
- revive pet and heart of the phoenix (ferocity) - bake it together
- tranquilizing shot - maybe something needs to be done about its' focus cost and no cooldown, I think other dispels have 8 sec cooldowns by now
- widow venom - just bad, merge it with either serpent sting (mandatory in PVP due to recent buffed damage), it is bad that it lasts only 10sec in PVP for a no damage and a 15 focus/GCD cost
- black arrow needs to have its' cooldown removed, the lock and load proc has a 10second internal cooldown, just make it an exclusive 1 target ability, it does way too much damage and it is hard to achieve pressure while switching targets, especially in PVP
- glyph of pathfinding is only 10%, while we already have 10% from the guild perk passive, and it is incredibly useless at 10% on its' own even in battlegrounds, can you make it 20% as the paladins and DK's have it in their spellbook by default? come on we are pet handles, make our mounts faster, make us happy and show that you care about little things in life
- spirit mend - why do I also need to tame a special pet, which is rare and hard to get - just baseline add it to all BM hunters through tree perks
- track hidden is still listed only under minimap options - throw it in a spellbook, being able to see stealthed player's footprints at certain range would be more fun than enchanced detection on its' own - as if they walked through snow or sand - the technology is there
- Marksman tree alltogether, buff the AOE multishot damage, maybe add the bleed effect to it as well, implement a grimoire of sacrifice alike passive, where the hunter would inherit pet's buffs and gain a minor damage boost while it is not present. SV offers excellent utility and crowd control, BM gives you a pet to play with, MM offers nothing useful
- steady shot and cobra shot aren't fun, and not many hunters gem haste, even in a raid environment the cast time doesn't drop below 1,7 seconds. Just make it instant and put it on a 2 second cooldown, maybe adjust the focus gain
- bring rapid recouperation to its' former glory, while not the most famous spec, MM was fun while you received 50 focus upon killing a mob that granted experience, passive focus gain only during rapid fire is lame
- camouflage - remove the 1 minute duration from it, being visable for 1 sec in between camouflages doesn't exactly spell out overpowered
- snake trap - just get rid of it, no use beyond an extra entrapment proc as SV
- flare - does it still have a smaller radius than the range of rogue's sap? that is silly
- hunter opening rotation in combination with readiness needs to be looked at, because it feels like putting on a wet suit before before diving
- kill shot, it does pitiful damage compared to other executes, and the reset mechanic if it fails to kill makes little sense, either make it do double damage with no reset mechanic (which bugs out often) or make the cooldowns stack up to 2 usable spells before the cooldown starts (see warrior Double Time talent and how it shows on the action bars, very simple)
And in the end, the very basics of how to fix the hunter - make more talents/shots/abilities scale with HUNTERS RANGED WEAPON DAMAGE, not attack power, not pet normal attack times random modifier. It would make the class more consistent and up to par as the raid tiers progress.
Thank you for reading, it is a great wall of text indeed.