Hunters and PvP

[Spazz1]

I really don't understand why blizz dosent buff hunters in regards to pvp, I'm sure that are well aware of the hunter representation in arenas, right? Why are they not doing anything about it? It just blows my mind. Here is an informative post on suggestions for pvp which i thought was well writtin and is worth reading. Hopefully a dev will take a glance at this.


Edited by Bloodwarden on 2/23/11 9:34 PM (UTC) Developers,
I understand you do your best to ensure that the game is functioning properly, and that you really get tired of the whining and complaining about how you should be fired, tossed into the streets and burned at the stake after being bludgeoned to within an inch of your lives with a frozen chicken, then fed to starving rats for screwing something up. I assure you, this post is not one that carries that sentiment. However, this post is a series of suggestions to repair issues with the hunter class.

Just to head off any undue criticism from forum trolls, I ask that you please not post here, and add suggestions or criticize only where appropriate.

So let’s get into a numbered list of hunter changes which would greatly help address our issues. All of these changes apply to PVP – not PVE. They have been thought through in order to avoid causing unnecessary buffs to PVE where hunters are actually performing at a reasonable level. Some changes will effect this level, but minimally.

#1. Hunters are practically unable to kill a healer effectively.

Part A:
What is meant by this, is that hunters do not have the ability to drop a healer in arena PVP situations. The damage output simply does not exist. Aimed Shot buffs were needed, Kill Shot is still in need of further buffs as well. However, Aimed Shot is not a viable ability in arena, where a 2.X second cast will never successfully land on a healer that is pillar humping. It just won’t happen without incredible luck, slows, CCs, etc… and when it does land, the opponent, whether it be the healer or his partner, has more than enough resilience to cause Aimed Shot to hit for under 20K HP. The buff to 200% in the patch has since been rescinded to a lower level, and rightfully so. But damage buffs to other low damage abilities should have been put in place to balance the instant cast shots with the casted ones. Shots like Arcane Shot remain grossly underpowered. Do not take this suggestion and OVER buff Arcane shot or any other ability, simply buff it to a more reasonable level for the focus cost – taking into account the fact that it is an instant cast without a cooldown.

In current pvp gear – as listed on the armory, a 2.75 sec casted aimed shot with a cost of 50 focus, including a wild quiver proc and the bleed effect does a total of 53894 damage vs. a target dummy with no resilience. 38,267 Aimed Shot (critical), 11,480 Bleed, and 3,147 Wild Quiver proc. Versus a target with significant resilience, this is far less.
Similarly, 5 consecutive Arcane Shots do 35,710 damage at the cost of 110 focus. This includes one crit for 12k and 4 non-crits for around 6k each. It takes 5 seconds to shoot 5 shots. Per point of focus, Aimed Shot outperforms Arcane Shot by 440.7 or (roughly 2.35:1) points of damage per point of focus. This is excluding the bleed effect and wild quiver proc. This particular damage spell is far too underpowered for any situation. Since Aimed Shot cannot be casted while moving, Arcane Shot is the defacto filler.

Aimed Shot dmg per focus (critical)= 765.34

Arcane Shot dmg per focus (20% critical) = 324.64

(Aimed Shot dpf 765.34) – (Arcane Shot dpf 324.64) = 440.7 dpf difference per point of focus.

This shot is in serious need of attention to affect PVP without severely impacting PVE performance. A slight buff to this shot would help to increase PVP performance, yet it would still remain unattractive to PVE Hunters due to the still lower DPF than Aimed Shot.

Chimera Shot X 5 (20% critical) = 88,562 damage / 220 focus = 402.55 DPF

Chimera Shot is also disappointing, yet not unreasonable. But condsidering the high cost and 10 second cooldown, a slight buff is also needed here beyond the 4.0.6 buffs.

In order to normalize the damage hunters are able to do in PVP without unbalancing PVE, the suggestion for damage changes to these shots is as follows;

Arcane Shot (current) = 324.64 DPF Suggested Change = 380 DPF (15% increase)

Chimera Shot (current) = 402.55 DPF Suggested Change = 430 DPF (7% increase)

Aimed Shot (current) = 440.55 DPF Suggested Change = 450 DPF (1% increase)

These changes to damage would minimally affect PVE (roughly 1-2% increase – taking 10 second cooldown into consideration) over long fights. But the short term damage in PVE would hardly be noticeable. However, in PVP, these changes would considerably improve hunter damage (particularly considering the high mobility requirements of PVP).

continue in part 2-------- #1

---------- Post added 2011-02-23 at 07:45 PM ----------

Edited by Bloodwarden on 2/23/11 9:35 PM (UTC) Part B:
The second part of hunter viability in PVP is the absence of any ability to drain mana. Our damage is not high enough to force a healer to heal any meaningful amount which will cause him/her to lose mana faster than regen will recover (unless the healer is stupid enough to allow himself or his partner to remain in the open long enough for the hunter to rapid cast Aimed Shot - this is directed at the individuals that will undoubtedly post about hunter Aimed Shot – please do not forget that resilience is a major damage reduction and there is no way that anyone is being crit by Aimed Shot for 50k through 3k resil in plate, or whatever urban legend you may have heard). Hunters are easy to LOS, and even easier to kill in close range. The lack of effective damage in pvp calls for the return of mana drains. Although, even these could be dispelled in the past and they would be almost entirely ineffective vs druids and paladins, two of the most difficult classes to OOM, even with damage increases.

[a side note – more often than not, a druid or paladin will kite and LOS until the time on a match runs out. When their partner dies, it turns into a run and hide shell game which ends after 45 minutes of frustration. If this has never happened to you, consider yourself lucky. Devs, I encourage you to test this in games amongst yourselves.]

My suggestion is thus: Return Viper Sting to the game. However, set a medium length cooldown (30 seconds-45 seconds) and make it an instant drain shot similar to mana burn – not a poison. Yet, in order to remain fair, make the hunter pay dearly for it. A very high focus cost would be appropriate. Either that, or combine it with Silencing Shot, Wyvern Sting, and Intimidation – one for each hunter spec (since hunters already have far too many abilities to manage without adding more). All of those abilities are on relatively long cooldowns and the mana drain would not be a constant problem. Healers will still be able to pillar hump and LOS for the 45 minute duration of a match forcing a draw if they are complete jerks, but the likelihood will be far less plausible.

This ability would have little or no use in PVE. It is strictly a PVP change.

#2 Hunter Traps and their true effectiveness as a CC:

Part A: Hunters have been upset, and rightfully so, about traps being resisted. This must stop. Unless the opponent is in a state which prevents CC, there is no reason why a 30 second cooldown should be resisted as often as they are.

Suggestion : Remove the resistance to traps. Period.

Part B: Freezing traps are unreliable.

Any dot (of which hunters have several - particularly bleeds which are applied with a majority of our useful shots and we have no control over) will break a trap, which is, once again, on a 30 second cooldown. Mages have a spam-able CC which breaks on damage, and frost mages are capable of locking someone in ice while damage is being done to that player. Warlocks fear and dot, generating a disgusting amount of damage. Rogues, warriors, etc…. all have a way to stun and continue doing damage. Both ranged and melee classes have these abilities. Sadly, CC, as well as range closing, or gaining abilities, self-heals, burst, etc… has all become a gigantic arms race in the world of warcraft. I would much rather talk about where to nerf other classes, but that will come later, now here is a suggestion to fix hunter CC a bit to at least bring it up to par with what other classes already have.

Suggestion: Allow Freezing Trap to absorb damage before it breaks.

Not a ton of damage – roughly the equivalent of what the hex spell will allow before it breaks. Either that, or force the trap to take damage instead of the person in the trap – meaning that the person will take no damage from dots or other effects while in the trap, the trap will absorb the damage until it breaks. I really have no idea what other classes think of this, but since the mechanics of bleeds have been applied to most of our damage dealing shots, clutch CC has become an issue with our 30 second cool-downs being wasted more often than not.


continue below in part 3------

---------- Post added 2011-02-23 at 07:47 PM ----------

Edited by Bloodwarden on 2/23/11 9:37 PM (UTC) Suggestion: Freezing Shot

Freezing shot – adding this new spell would certainly alleviate some serious problems with the hunter CC issues. Not a freezing trap shot – no – a shot that freezes the target with a 30 second cooldown shared with freezing trap. Target person, Shoot freezing shot (have a cast time or whatever you want to make it interruptable), freeze the person/mob, continue. The sad reality of the hunter situation is that we cannot compete in the arms race. Although I loath to suggest “new” abilities – it is the only option.

#3 Hunter melee:
Hunters are not a melee class. The entire purpose of every other class attempting to close the gap between us is to negate hunter damage entirely. Our deadzone has been all but eliminated, but the survival of the hunter in melee range is still poor. Do not change this. We are meant to be at range, and we have abilities to help us get there. Yet, the arms race continues – rogues, warriors, every class can still close the gap. That is a good thing (hunter flames inc.) – however, closing the gap too much is a bad thing. If other classes cannot close the gap, then they have no chance against a hunter – this is unbalanced. But flipping the coin, and closing the gap too much, is also unbalanced.

Suggestion: Redesign Counterattack and make it a standard hunter ability as well as increasing melee damage, or bringing back mongoose bite.

Damage first… Hunter damage in melee is very weak, Raptor Strike simply does not do enough. The idea is not to make hunters a melee class – far from it. The idea is to give hunters a fighting chance. We are not warriors or rogues, nor do we wish to be. If we wanted to win more games with less effort, we would have already rolled one of the two and called it a day. But most hunters actually love the class and stick with it through bad times as well as the good.

The redesign of counterattack is simple. A cooldown melee ability that pins the target in place for X number of seconds or a melee disarm or both. The requirement for using the ability is to be the target of a melee attack. Pretty simple huh? Uptime of melee damage vs hunters is too great at the moment. This needs to be addressed either through buffs (adding to the arms race) or nerfs (risking the outrage of even more people than just one class).

#4 Other classes:

Self heals:

To put this simply, the arms race has gotten out of hand. Rogues, Hunters, Warriors, Mages, etc… are not healers, nor do they need self heals, the exceptions being tanking spec classes. However, if you have ever fought double blood dk in an arena match, you would agree that their damage needs to be brought into check if self heals are granted to a protection specialization. Remove the self heal mechanics from the game. It serves very little purpose that a warlock or rogue can literally self heal for more damage than a hunter can dish out against that target. If bandages are not enough self healing for a pure damage class, then that is just too bad.

Healers:

Healers have a lot of survivability. Too much. When a holy paladin, resto druid, resto shaman, etc… can kite and regen more mana than is required to keep himself alive with a pure dps class wailing on him, then something is wrong. Address this issue please. Either through hunter buffs, or through pvp gear on the healer side. Reduced resil, intellect, etc… something has to give. However reducing the healer survivability vs melee classes by reducing their pvp gear stats might be a very bad idea. Since hunters are having the issue, perhaps addressing the hunter problem would be the most intelligent thing to do.
Gap closers: this was already covered in the previous suggestions for hunter melee, but I feel it deserves another mention here and a reiteration. The melee uptime is too great – that is all I can say.

CC of other classes: mages and warlocks are the principal issue here. Multiple fear targets for warlocks, as well as the complete lockouts that mages provide… if a mage deep freezes you, it is trinket or die. No other options. When completely locked out, either the CC needs to break on damage, or there needs to be a damage cap before the CC breaks or that the CC will absorb. Or simply remove that mechanic from the game. It is overkill.

Warlock capability to fear multiple targets is also ridiculous. The control this class commands on a battlefield is unreasonable considering the multitude of CC and irrational self healing abilities available to it. Although, warlocks should receive their mana drains back as well as hunters. Nerf multiple target fears, and self healing – restore mana drain to this class. I understand the fear, silence, stun, etc… type CC available to this class is seen by this class as “not enough”, but taking the damage done by this class into account, this level of control is extreme. – not as bad as a mage, but still extreme.

continue below in part 4-------------

[zealous]

I really don't understand why blizz dosent buff hunters in regards to pvp, I'm sure that are well aware of the hunter representation in arenas, right? Why are they not doing anything about it? It just blows my mind. Here is an informative post on suggestions for pvp which i thought was well writtin and is worth reading. Hopefully a dev will take a glance at this.

1. Many classes/specs are in a similar situation with low arena representation. Hunters are not unique in this.

2. This is a fan-site, there are ZERO devs here.

3. Try posting this on the official forums but don't expect much more than "wall of text crits for xxxxx" comments. Since that really is a giant wall of text, not many people on the internet are bored enough or have the attention span to read that.

(edit - I see this is already a copied post, what is the point of posting it here since it seems like it already had been posted on the official forums?)

[Rezusian]

1. Many classes/specs are in a similar situation with low arena representation. Hunters are not unique in this.

2. This is a fan-site, there are ZERO devs here.

3. Try posting this on the official forums but don't expect much more than "wall of text crits for xxxxx" comments. Since that really is a giant wall of text, not many people on the internet are bored enough or have the attention span to read that.

(edit - I see this is already a copied post, what is the point of posting it here since it seems like it already had been posted on the official forums?)

1. Hunters are more than likely the least represented class at the higher ratings, they are the least represented in the bracket that I play and the rating I play at as far as personal experience goes.

2. CMs / GMs / Devs have stated many many times that they do read fansites, they are players too. It is ignorance to think that Blizzard do not read these forums.

3. It is well written and addresses the issues facing the class very well, it is compelling to read and if you have an IQ above lets say... 50, you will have the patience to read what is written after the first few sentences when you can see it is an intelligent post and not the normal QQ / trolling.

@ OP: Good post, good suggestions, lets hope that the devs sit up and take notice of it.

[ionicman1]

The world of war graphs site shows a very low representation of hunters in arena. In 2200+ arena, 1.2% in 2v2, 2.7% in 3v3, and 2.3% in 5v5, showing how seriously under represented hunters really are in Arena.

I know not every class can be perfectly balanced for PvP, but it is pretty clear hunters are far and away the least popular class to take into arena.

[Lilyana]

#1. Hunters are practically unable to kill a healer effectively.

No class in wow is intended to solo a healer. That shouldn't EVER happen unless eventually the healer ooms. This is blizzard's clear design intent and there were blue posts to this effect.

As for the rest of the wall of crit:

Have you realised that chimera, and arcane hit way harder in PvP now and are hawk friendly, on the move? Probably not. Anyway to get a healer down, your best chance isn't MM.

It's BM and its with a monkey pet. Basically healers get lulled into false sense of security, get them down to roughly half their health then pop all cooldowns. The healer will try flash healing, or something a bit more than their usual heal, its here you use the monkey to interrupt just when the cast is nearly finished. The healer will immediately begin healing again, and this is when intimidation goes off and if they don't have a trinket, your KC + arcane spam drives them quickly into kill shot range.

I've soloed healers like this because they got sloppy, not because my class easily beats them. It shouldn't beat a healer.

[redsunrising15]

It's BM and its with a monkey pet. Basically healers get lulled into false sense of security, get them down to roughly half their health then pop all cooldowns. The healer will try flash healing, or something a bit more than their usual heal, its here you use the monkey to interrupt just when the cast is nearly finished. The healer will immediately begin healing again, and this is when intimidation goes off and if they don't have a trinket, your KC + arcane spam drives them quickly into kill shot range.

I've soloed healers like this because they got sloppy, not because my class easily beats them. It shouldn't beat a healer.

What this guy said. My bro (rogue) and I went 7-1 yesterday, all 7 wins were against healers, and the loss was against two dps hybrids. (I HATE HYBRIDS they both burn you and then when you focus fire one the other starts healing him)

[Athelo]

No class in wow is intended to solo a healer. That shouldn't EVER happen unless eventually the healer ooms. This is blizzard's clear design intent and there were blue posts to this effect.

As for the rest of the wall of crit:

Have you realised that chimera, and arcane hit way harder in PvP now and are hawk friendly, on the move? Probably not. Anyway to get a healer down, your best chance isn't MM.

It's BM and its with a monkey pet. Basically healers get lulled into false sense of security, get them down to roughly half their health then pop all cooldowns. The healer will try flash healing, or something a bit more than their usual heal, its here you use the monkey to interrupt just when the cast is nearly finished. The healer will immediately begin healing again, and this is when intimidation goes off and if they don't have a trinket, your KC + arcane spam drives them quickly into kill shot range.

I've soloed healers like this because they got sloppy, not because my class easily beats them. It shouldn't beat a healer.

So what if its hawk friendly. Sure you can shoot a CS shot and 2 arcane shots while moving. Now you need to wait a global cooldown switching to fox before you can do anything meaningful to regen your dps through a moving steady shot. And lets be honest hunters in pvp are ALWAYS moving.

Blizz has said they don't want aspect juggling to be an intimate requirement of this class in pvp, and in a way they force what they say they don't want.


Another thing. Did anyone find it funny when it took a huge wall of QQ on blizz forums and 1 week for them to decide MM hunters doing damage at range was simply unacceptable? Whaa? He managed to do 50k on cloth burning 90% of his focus requiring his target 4 seconds in the open, not out of range, and not to close? Preposterous!

I thought it was hilarious, I've been leveling my alts since.

[Barash]

1. Many classes/specs are in a similar situation with low arena representation. Hunters are not unique in this.

When hunters are at 1.61%, and the next highest is priests sitting at 7%, this argument doesn't hold a lot of water.

[Deleted]

If anything, hunters are going to have their damage output further reduced in the next few patches. If trap resists could be fixed, they would have been by now.

If you really like arenas, use a different class. It's as simple as that.

[Zauber]

The healer will immediately begin healing again, and this is when intimidation goes off

Oh and I thought it had a 42s cd, good to hear it now goes off cd when a a healer begin to heal

[Deleted]

#3 Hunter melee:
Hunters are not a melee class. The entire purpose of every other class attempting to close the gap between us is to negate hunter damage entirely. Our deadzone has been all but eliminated, but the survival of the hunter in melee range is still poor. Do not change this. We are meant to be at range, and we have abilities to help us get there. Yet, the arms race continues – rogues, warriors, every class can still close the gap. That is a good thing (hunter flames inc.) – however, closing the gap too much is a bad thing. If other classes cannot close the gap, then they have no chance against a hunter – this is unbalanced. But flipping the coin, and closing the gap too much, is also unbalanced.

Suggestion: Redesign Counterattack and make it a standard hunter ability as well as increasing melee damage, or bringing back mongoose bite.

Damage first… Hunter damage in melee is very weak, Raptor Strike simply does not do enough. The idea is not to make hunters a melee class – far from it. The idea is to give hunters a fighting chance. We are not warriors or rogues, nor do we wish to be. If we wanted to win more games with less effort, we would have already rolled one of the two and called it a day. But most hunters actually love the class and stick with it through bad times as well as the good.

The redesign of counterattack is simple. A cooldown melee ability that pins the target in place for X number of seconds or a melee disarm or both. The requirement for using the ability is to be the target of a melee attack. Pretty simple huh? Uptime of melee damage vs hunters is too great at the moment. This needs to be addressed either through buffs (adding to the arms race) or nerfs (risking the outrage of even more people than just one class).

What are you trying to say here? First part you say we are not melee class and should not be address in that direction and then you ask for more melee spell as "mongoose" and on top of that more damage on melee abilites.

This totally contradictory to what you say in first place. No to give hunter a fighting chance in melee range would be to glyph your Raptor Strike(reduce damage) or ask for the old Wing Clip(pin the target in place) to come back in stead of Mongoose.

The design of hunters in melee is to get the fuck out of there(pardon my french).

You maybe want to try BM then you can disengage all day long.