Proposed hunter changes

[bamfrosty]

Well, the other night I was bored, and was left without an internet connection for a few hours, so I decided to think of some changes to bring BM and MM up in PVE content, and the class as a whole in PVP. Many of these changes are BM oriented, considering that's the spec I personally like the most and the spec lagging behind the most in competitive PVP (blowing up zero res targets in BGs doesn't count), but I tried to include things to give Marks a boost as well. I know Blizz doesn't read these forums, but I'd like some feedback from fellow hunters.

BM Changes

Killing Streak: After scoring two Kill Command critical strikes in a row, your next one with deal 30% increased damage and have its focus cost reduced by 20. Also, your Kill Command hits have a 20% chance to make your Kill Shot usable regardless of the target’s health. Lasts 15 seconds. (30% may have been OP in Beta where we were getting 50k Kill Commands, but right now this talent is severely lacking. Considering KC's cooldown of 6 seconds, and the current Killing Streak duration of 8 seconds, we only have an effective 2 seconds to take advantage of the proc, which is absolutely awful in PvP. I also feel that this proc is somewhat boring in the sense that it doesn't change up our rotation at all. We're always hitting Kill Command on CD anyway, so in it's current state Killing Streak is nothing more than essentially passive DPS. The Kill Shot proc component changes this and gives a needed DPS boost).

Pathfinding: Increases speed while mounted by 20%, and increases the speed boost of Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack by 10%. Also increases base run speed by 15%. (This brings it in line with other classes' mounted speed increases, as well as gives us back our movement speed increase formerly tied to Kindred Spirits).

One With Nature: Increases the attack power bonus from your Aspect of the Hawk by 100% and causes you to receive an additional 3 focus when struck by melee attacks while in Aspect of the Fox. (The DPS increase currently from this talent is abysmal).

Spirit Bond: Causes you and your pet to regenerate 2% of you and your pet’s health every 5 seconds, as well as increasing all healing effects on you and your pet by 10%. (Just trying to make the health regen component actually worth something. The only reason to take this talent now is the 10% increased healing).

Kindred Spirits: Increases you and your pet’s focus by 20 as well as gives the recipients of your Master’s Call a 30% movement speed increase for its duration. (10 extra focus that will most likely only get any use at the start of the fight is almost unnoticable, and I found it odd that no BM talents had anything to do with Master's Call).

Bestial Wrath lasting 15 seconds would be nice since its CCable now. And, at risk of venturing into OP territory, make your pet’s attacks during BW ignore armor (hell, Colossus Smash is on a 20 second cooldown, and this would vastly improve BM’s viability versus plate teams).

Take Fervor off the global cooldown.

Increase Kill Command range to 8 yards to compensate for pet pathing bugs.

Make Focus Fire restore 50 focus to our pets to give some incentive for actually using it in PvP.

Lower Intimidation cooldown to 45 seconds baseline.

Also make Glyph of Bestial Wrath a Prime Glyph, so BM hunters can have the holy Disengage/Master’s Call/Raptor Strike major glyph set (also the current BM prime glyph selection kind of stinks).

Marksman Talent Changes

Make Efficiency also decrease the focus cost of Kill Command by 3

Make Rapid Killing apply to Chimera Shot.

Maybe increase the focus gain from Go for the Throat. 10 focus on auto-shot crits is abysmal, and the only reason to really spec here is for Sic 'Em.

Take Improved Steady Shot out of the second tier. Have it switch places with something the other specs can get some use out of (Posthaste or Silencing Shot would be wonderful, but unlikely).

Give an incentive to take Trueshot Aura even if your raid has the buff covered (10% more Steady Shot damage or something).

Change Termination to below 35% health instead of 25%.

Get rid of the refund mechanic of Resistance is Futile and just make the KC free (on a side note, why is the best BM talent in the Marks tree?).

Make Master Marksman only have to stack up to 3 for the Aimed Shot proc.

Buff Aimed Shot damage considerably.

Increase the healing component of Chimera Shot.

Change Marks spec bonus to an increase in Steady Shot damage as well as auto-shot. Right now most Marks arena players are just using Cobra Shot, and I doubt that's Blizzard's design intent.

General Changes

Make Master’s Call (and Roar of Sacrifice) a party-wide effect. This would free up keybinds and increase overall usefulness.

Increase trap activation radius and fix resist bugs.

Tie a heal-over-time component to Widow Venom and make it last 15 seconds in PvP.

Increase Mastery scaling for BM and Marks.

Give Hunter vs. Wild a movement impairing effect reduction, ala what other classes’ survivability talents have.

Merging Raptor Strike and Wing Clip would be nice as well, at least for freeing up a keybind.

Make Counterattack usable during Deterrence (about the only time we’ll ever parry anything).

Adding some sort of DOT cleanse would help immensely, and isn’t exactly a stretch lorewise (most experienced woodsmen are familiar with basic first aid skills and poison treatment).

Make Snake Trap actually do some damage, apply all poisons, and give the snakes health pools that won’t be AOE’d down in a global.

Fix pet health spawning bugs.

Cut down the cast time of Revive Pet to five seconds.

Give Shale Spiders their second ability.

Let us macro Trap Launcher into our traps, so we don’t have to play piano to CC someone.

Make Black Arrow undispellable.

Lower Deterrence cooldown to 1 minute.

Make a hunter-only melee weapon for PvP like in Burning Crusade.

Give us our Dodge rating back.

Make disarms last 5 seconds in PvP all around (the whole weapon chain thing screws over us and melee, especially taking into account how valuable the new enchants are for damage). There aren’t any silences that last 10 seconds, why have disarms that long, especially if everyone just runs with a weapon chain?

Give us Hawkeye back and fix the range on Silencing and Tranq Shot. Minimum range was fine when we at least outranged casters, not so much anymore.

[MMOBrains]

First thing I notice was the Kill Command having chance to unlock Kill Shot.

I'd lower that percentage a lot or even make it so that KC crits have a chance to unlock KS. Even then, 20% is massive for KS which is pretty powerful (especially when glyphed).

[bamfrosty]

First thing I notice was the Kill Command having chance to unlock Kill Shot.

I'd lower that percentage a lot or even make it so that KC crits have a chance to unlock KS. Even then, 20% is massive for KS which is pretty powerful (especially when glyphed).

Yeah, 20% is probably a bit too high. That being said, the talent wouldn't activate the KS Glyph. And the current Kill Shot really is not that powerful (although this is definitely subject to change with the upcoming buffs).

[Einlanzer]

Truthfully, although you have some sound suggestions, hunters need a ground-up design overhaul that is more comprehensive than a few bandage fixes to certain abilities.

[Gildian]

Truthfully, although you have some sound suggestions, hunters need a ground-up design overhaul that is more comprehensive than a few bandage fixes to certain abilities.

Agreed. I enjoy my hunter a lot, but trying 2s atm is just far too frustrating. Between LoS abuse and low survivability, it just doesn't seem right.

[Thereign]

I like the idea regarding roar of sac/ roar of recovery, those two abilities alone are keybind hogs.

[Tueland]

I crit your wall of text for over 9000!

[Thereign]

I crit your wall of text for over 9000!

not really a wall of text, as it does have punctuation and spacing.

[Love me]

Make Kill command cost our pet focus not us.

[Dunee]

These changes are amazing and I would love to see them come through.. a few pointers thoug.

Tweak them numbers, 30% chance for killshot is alot

party wide master's call is just a tiny bit OP tbh.. would feel like old beastcleave lololol we can't be rooted/slowed xD

[insmek]

I like alot of these changes, but I will admit that they really are bandages on a wound that needs far more attention.

For me, I find the three specs to be far too similar when compared to the way other classes are. I'm a supporter of a sweeping change to completely redo the design of the Hunter class and make one type of Hunter fundamentally different than the next.

Beast Mastery: Remodeled to be the only pet class. A great deal of their DPS would come from their pets, and because of that they would be granted more options for pet healing, resurrection, and general pet survivability. They would still function as a ranged class, but the majority of their abilities would be channeled through their pets rather than fired from their bows. Primarily focused on single-target DPS.

Marksmanship: Loses the pet, but gains a large ranged toolset. They rain down death from above, with greater AoE ability than either of the other two specs. They would need tools for getting out of melee range but wouldn't get much in the way of CC.

Survival: Also loses the pet, and becomes primarily a melee spec. Gains a true stealth but can't use it as an ambush like a Rogue or Druid, instead using it to lay traps and navigate around opponents. Attacks primarily by applying debuffs and DoTs. It would still have a ranged weapon, but it would have a very small toolset to go along with it. Survival would have a large degree of CC to make up for the lack of a pet or ranged abilities.


...sadly, none of these things are truly likely to happen at all, nice though I think it might be. Someday, far down the line Blizzard might give a true second look at the overall state of things, but for the foreseeable future we're far more likely to continue caught in the endless cycle of small buffs and nerfs to individual abilities.

[Lewlipopz]

Hunters are fine.
You cannot fix what is not broken.
OXOXXO

[bamfrosty]

These changes are amazing and I would love to see them come through.. a few pointers thoug.

Tweak them numbers, 30% chance for killshot is alot

party wide master's call is just a tiny bit OP tbh.. would feel like old beastcleave lololol we can't be rooted/slowed xD

It's 20%, although that still is probably too much. Most of the numbers here are estimates.

[Archermit]

Agreed. I enjoy my hunter a lot, but trying 2s atm is just far too frustrating. Between LoS abuse and low survivability, it just doesn't seem right.

was talking to a guildie this morning, he was asking why i dnt PvP much on my hunter. I told him they are crap in PvP and h disagreed with me. he said he ( an enhance shammy) plays with a hunter guildie and the hunter does some great damage. I said yes when your keeping them focused on you. I asked him what happens with the hunter gets tunneled, he simpled said we lose cause he dies in seconds :/

[Deleted]

Hunters are fine.
You cannot fix what is not broken.
OXOXXO

Don't you love it when another class comes busting in proclaiming you're all fine.

[ltm]

mend pet needs to scale with haste similar to dots

[Lakerdas]

I like alot of these changes, but I will admit that they really are bandages on a wound that needs far more attention.

For me, I find the three specs to be far too similar when compared to the way other classes are. I'm a supporter of a sweeping change to completely redo the design of the Hunter class and make one type of Hunter fundamentally different than the next.

Beast Mastery: Remodeled to be the only pet class. A great deal of their DPS would come from their pets, and because of that they would be granted more options for pet healing, resurrection, and general pet survivability. They would still function as a ranged class, but the majority of their abilities would be channeled through their pets rather than fired from their bows. Primarily focused on single-target DPS.

Marksmanship: Loses the pet, but gains a large ranged toolset. They rain down death from above, with greater AoE ability than either of the other two specs. They would need tools for getting out of melee range but wouldn't get much in the way of CC.

Survival: Also loses the pet, and becomes primarily a melee spec. Gains a true stealth but can't use it as an ambush like a Rogue or Druid, instead using it to lay traps and navigate around opponents. Attacks primarily by applying debuffs and DoTs. It would still have a ranged weapon, but it would have a very small toolset to go along with it. Survival would have a large degree of CC to make up for the lack of a pet or ranged abilities.


...sadly, none of these things are truly likely to happen at all, nice though I think it might be. Someday, far down the line Blizzard might give a true second look at the overall state of things, but for the foreseeable future we're far more likely to continue caught in the endless cycle of small buffs and nerfs to individual abilities.

I like this, even tho surv would fall far behind in DPS, something that Blizzard doesnt like to do.

But anyhow, its more probable to see a 3rd overhaul for the paladin class than this. Unfortunately.

[karaokekc]

I like this, even tho surv would fall far behind in DPS, something that Blizzard doesnt like to do.

But anyhow, its more probable to see a 3rd overhaul for the paladin class than this. Unfortunately.

I think this would be an amazing change and make me fall back in love with the Hunter class... I think survival could make up the DPS difference with major upgrades to their traps...

[Deleted]

Make Kill command cost our pet focus not us.

And it should be useable, even if we shoots something else.
Does not make sence, that WE have to stop shooting, for our pet to bite/Or-what-ever-they-do someone.

[bamfrosty]

And it should be useable, even if we shoots something else.
Does not make sence, that WE have to stop shooting, for our pet to bite/Or-what-ever-they-do someone.

No, I'd really rather not just macro and forget it. Stop trying to think of it as a pet ability. It's BM's equivalent to Chimera or Explosive Shot, it just uses the pet as a medium.