Hunter class design flaws and shortcomings

[Deleted]

A hunter from my guild wrote a relevant post about Hunter class design. Discuss.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6298350274

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.

[Suffocatingsight]

Much of this is indeed well put, but I think it's a bit overboard. As i've read in some other threads regarding similar things. Change Readiness to defensive cds only, change MM in the ways he has suggested, and about half of the other things in this thread are an absolute Necessity, rest is just fluff.

[eschatological]

Most of what was written smacks of a hunter wanting to be powerful without any consideration of balance.

Also,

- 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

Glyph of Stampede is a MINOR glyph. It isn't supposed to have game altering mechanics. It is supposed to be cosmetic. You are supposed to want to have 5 different buffs from Stampede pets during Stampede. All Stampede pets were supposed to be nerfed by 75% when they came out, that Stampede spirit beasts didn't have their heal reduced by 75% was an imba bug.

Even more ridiculous, you want Spirit Mend passive in BM? Hunters already have the highest passive healing in the game with Spirit Bond (better than Recup, heyo), it's just that we generally don't want to take it over Iron Hawk. Asking for both is ridiculous. Asking for Spirit Mend on top of Iron Hawk without a Spirit Beast is - pointless? Why not just use a Spirit beast as BM? It's not like they give up a "normal" buff for Spirit Mend, they still have 3k mastery buff. Oh wait, you want your crane lullaby, your iron hawk, AND your heal on top of that? LoL.

The main design flaw of hunters in one sentence: Being a ranged physical damage dealing class which relies on alternative resource bars and "filler" shots as the main method to regen that resource bar.

Almost all our design quirks stem from being focus-capped and an inability to use abilities easily. Either up our passive regen massively and remove the shot (and thus buff other shots across the board), or go the feral route, with short CDs and Clearcasting procs *baseline* to keep our focus up, with a smaller focus regen boost (Feral still regens faster than hunter).

[Warrada]

There is another thread on US forums about the state of our class. Ive been posting there to give support, trying to catch attention of some blue.. Please help.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2802934?page=1

[SL1200]

I like the way hunters are playing right now. The only change I think they need to make would be moving readiness into the spec and give viable alternatives. I really don't see them doing a complete overhaul like the one you're talking bout here in mid expansion.

[Warrada]

I like the way hunters are playing right now. The only change I think they need to make would be moving readiness into the spec and give viable alternatives. I really don't see them doing a complete overhaul like the one you're talking bout here in mid expansion.

Looks like you havent been playing much with a Hunter latelly, or a least you didnt read what the guy on EU forums suggested... All of his points are vallid and make sense, and i agree with everything he said...

[Xeraxis]

A hunter from my guild wrote a relevant post about Hunter class design. Discuss.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6298350274

You lost me at relevant.

[Deleted]

You lost me at relevant.

Oh im sorry, maybe i should have written it in another way. No need to act douche about it.

[Nemesis003]

Oh im sorry, maybe i should have written it in another way. No need to act douche about it.

its just that word has too many letters for him to understand

[Jeremypwnz]

I just can't get myself to try to argue everything that is wrong with the 2 official WoW forum threads. While a few of the things mentioned hold merit, most of what's listed is just...

[Unalorian]

It must be obvious by now that something is wrong with the class, when the great majority of players chooses to play as BM

haha, sorry, I stopped reading there. If this is the logic he uses to start whatever argument he has, I can say before hand reading that will be a waste of my time.

Every expansion has its optimal hunter spec, BM imo was way overpowered (and retarded to play) in early TBC when you would basically spam a Steady Shot macro and outdps everyone else by 10-20%.

Picking BM nowadays is, to be honest, fairly fun. It has a decent rotation and it doesnt feel any different than playing Surv or MM from previous expansions. The class is not broken or anything, people just have to get their heads out of the hole and stop with their spec prejudices.

[gulder]

He's listed too many different things that I both agree and disagree with for me to have a single 'overall' opinion on his post.

My current issues with hunters are

1) Needs more dps. But then again, who doesn't?
2) Needs less piano, especially BM's opener,
3) Needs an option that allows Cobra Shot to finish its cast and give you the focus regen but no damage even if no target is selected. Very annoying tabbing between low health targets when you need to get a cast off.

Otherwise, I'm having a lot of fun. Removing minimum range and allowing us to do full dps on the move were incredible QoL changes and I'm very thankful for them. Now I can jump constantly while dpsing, like I've always wanted!

Of course this ignores the mess that pvp and MM are, but I don't interact much with either.

[Pull My Finger]

I hate these kind of posts. It's not a "design flaw" or "terrible design" just because you don't like it or don't get it.

I also tend to not even continue reading when people use these idiotically dramatic exaggerations to make their point come across. "Hunters are severe victim of neglect, suffering from terrible scaling and bad design", my God. Just read it loud and take it in. A severe victim of neglect ... really dude?! Cringeworthy. Another example was the little fella who wanted flying mounts removed. "The truth is that flying mounts are a parasite on the game, burrowed too deep to simply be removed without killing the host." I instantly thought: shut up.

[Manabomb]

haha, sorry, I stopped reading there. If this is the logic he uses to start whatever argument he has, I can say before hand reading that will be a waste of my time.

Every expansion has its optimal hunter spec, BM imo was way overpowered (and retarded to play) in early TBC when you would basically spam a Steady Shot macro and outdps everyone else by 10-20%.

Picking BM nowadays is, to be honest, fairly fun. It has a decent rotation and it doesnt feel any different than playing Surv or MM from previous expansions. The class is not broken or anything, people just have to get their heads out of the hole and stop with their spec prejudices.

Because it's balanced and perfectly normal for there to be one spec out dpsing the other two, right? I mean, Blizzard hasn't been homogenizing, reforming, reconstructing the class specs in Cata and MoP to prevent this kind of thing from happening, so obviously it's intentional.

Sarcasm aside BM is a few thousand dps ahead on sims, nothing game breaking, but they have made it a lot less clunky with mop save for focus fire's rather strange haste increases at higher gear levels and scaling as mentioned by the Op. Imo marks seems to have moved into the clunky that bm once was, especially in the realm of aoe. Surv is alright, while not being as clunky as marks but not being as refined as bm, especially considering black arrow. I think the pet sac-like ability for marks is an amazing idea, being one of the many advocates for marks being a lone archer that relies on no pet.

That brings me on topic with, I do agree with a lot of these "need to have" changes, a lot of them being QoL or minimal damage increases, just to relieve the rather irritating clunk that exists in 2/3 of hunter specs and hopefully eliminating future clunk that could arise from bm. The steady shot/cobra shot ones seem off to me, ic with a 2 second cooldown doesn't equal 1.7 sec cast and spammable to me, and seems subject to too much qq "A ranged class with all instant casts, op blizzard nerf" ect. Even if we educate the masses on this, they will still adhere to their uninformed mindset.

All in all a well thought out and promising post, let's hope blizzard listens for future patches or expansions.

[minkage]

Hunters as always are performing fine in PvE and for once even PvP.

We are not broken, not OP and not gimped. Just like all classes theres little tweaks and QoL changes we all hope for.

MM needs fixes while BM is fantastic single target and Survival is fan'FREAKING'tastic AoE spec.

[Nemesis003]

i can't help but wonder how many of these people who claim SV is "fantastic" AoE actually play the class..

[Deleted]

i can't help but wonder how many of these people who claim SV is "fantastic" AoE actually play the class..

This. Unless you get godly toth procs, other classes do better as burst aoe. Over a long time, other classes also do better.

It's so "fantastic", that SV can barely get in the top half of dps rankings on the 4 fights with some aoe. Forget about the other 12.

[Unalorian]

Because it's balanced and perfectly normal for there to be one spec out dpsing the other two, right?

No, is not normal, but that is not the point. It has been like that for 8 years now. The amount of emo'ing because BM is dominating is silly, and any hunter out there for more than Cata knows how we are the shittiest class to balance.

As is, I would rather have a FotM spec that is at least decent than have none (cough rogues cough)

[Dracodraco]

This. Unless you get godly toth procs, other classes do better as burst aoe. Over a long time, other classes also do better.

It's so "fantastic", that SV can barely get in the top half of dps rankings on the 4 fights with some aoe. Forget about the other 12.

I'm not sure which fights you see as "Aoe" fights where surv lacks behind other classes. They're top-dog on Sha of Fear's second phase due to our ability to dot everything up instantly and then single-target boss, the sustained AOE is far stronger and more reliable than any other class... Thing is, there's only two "aoe" fights this tier, Windlord and Sha. Shekzeer has AOE phases, but the majority of the fight is spent single-targetting her. That doesn't mean that hunters aren't great for the fight as surv, mind you, but it does mean that we are in the lower middle when add-phases comes, then shoot up to the top during AOE of the adds, and fall behind again on the singletarget burn.
Windlord obviously has singletarget burn classes going for it, due to the debuff. The AOE surv delivers are still on "top", though.

[Flaim]

- 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

not the best way to fix it.
a better solution is to make steady/cobra instant, but cause a 2 second GLOBAL cooldown that is affected by haste.
compare this to rets crusader strike


edit:
5k gold on dracodraco disagreeing with this like when i proposed this waaaay before aspect of the fox was removed xD
his reason: would be op to not be punished by movement at all.
jk, aotf removed