The Original Hunter Thread

Let me start by saying that the original thread, posted by Bandet, can be agreed by many to being the accurate standpoint, in which Hunters face.

I have chosen to risk and re-post his notes in the Damaging Dealing section as it is difficult, if not impossible to separate these issues from both PvE and PvP. We are a DPS class and these problems run into the core of our class, effecting both areas.

This thread is a re-post of notes, aimed toward the continuation of discussion on these issues. Any "QQ" or trolling will be reported individually so we can keep this civil and most importantly, constructive.

The Notes:

1. The Issue

Plain and simple, Hunters are underperforming at RBG's and Arenas.
Current Hunter Arena Representation at 2600+: 3%
http://www.arenastats.com/index.php?r=all&bg=all&br=3&mr=2600&mt=any&mg=5
Current # of hunters in the top 200 RBG rankings: 3
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/battlegrounds/?page=4

According to Wowcensus, Hunters are the SECOND most played class IN THE GAME.
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
You would think that logically, a class with more players would naturally have a higher representation in arenas. Some people might chalk this up to a "l2p" issue, but that is a blatant troll that has been tossed around since season 1. Yes, every hunter player in the game is bad. Be serious, we all know hunters have serious issues. The developers even admitted multiple times that hunters are poor in arenas, including during the current season, and nothing has been done to fix it. Hunters have remained bottom of the barrel throughout the history of the game. This season they have disregarded hunters state in arena pvp because we are supposedly powerful in RBGS. The statistics say otherwise. There is simply no reason to bring a hunter over nearly anything else in a RBG. We provide nothing that someone else cannot do better, that is why we have the lowest RBG representation.

Note that this is a class issue. Hunters as a CLASS are not viable in PvP. You may argue that your classes "Bad spec" is worse off than hunters, but if you want to be really nitpicky, Remember that the representation data is from MM hunters, as every hunter in top rated PvP is MM. SV is far worse in PvP than any of the "off specs", Holy priest, Elemental, prot specs. But, this is about class, so we will not discuss this. Every class has a viable PvP option, some have more than one, except for hunters. We have none.

2. The Problem

In this section I will be discussing the problems the class has and how it affects us. Everything from Gemming to pet pathing.

2-1. Core Mechanics

The phrase "Fix the bugs in the hunter class, and they will be fine" is tossed around a lot. The bugs they refer to are things like that which will be discussed in this section. These are the things that really need to be worked on before anything else is. This is the foundation of the class, and building on a shaky foundation leaves the building vulnerable to collapse. While "Fixing the bugs" in our class would go a long way to making us better, it is still a long shot from making hunters a viable class.

A. Focus

Now, focus is a very new thing in the game, and it is no way similar to the resource our pet has used (Which is basically energy, with a different color). The problem with focus is that it is supposed to be similar to energy, as the developers put it in cata beta, we regenerate less focus than rogues when doing nothing, but we regenerate more when casting steady shot, to balance it.

The following discussion of comparing focus to energy in no way suggests that rogues are overpowered or underpowered, but it is comparing a new resource, focus, to its closest cousin in the game that has existed forever, energy. There is nothing else we can compare it to for an idea of how it should be performing.

Currently, hunters generate less focus per second even when casting steady shots in a vacuum than a rogue regenerates passively.

(Note, in a vaccum means nothing else is happening, we are able to constantly steady shot with nothing hindering us, no cast time interruption on damage, no cast speed slows, no moving targets which can go out of range or out of los. Basically, a situation that does not exist in PvP.)

(Secondary note, the following numbers are taken from a hunter or rogue wearing PvP gear (Very little haste))

(Third note, this is not considering any resource regeneration that either the hunter or the rogue might get from outside sources, talents that restore energy, glyph of backstab, aspect of the fox, this is only concerned with passive regeneration)

Rogues passively regenerate 10 energy per second, the amount increased by their haste in PvP gear is .1 per second.

Every pvp rogue has the talent for improved recuperate. This gives them 12 energy every time recuperate ticks. Every tick is 3 seconds, so for all intents and purposes, you can consider the benefit of this talent an additonal 4 energy per second, provided recuperate is active, and quite frankly, if it is not always on, the rogue is not playing right.

So, we can consider rogues passive energy regeneration to be 14.10 per second.

A hunter (In haste amounts associated PvP gear, and the 4pc bonus) with improved steady shot active, will passively regenerate ~4.58 focus per second. If the hunter is constantly casting steady shot, (at a 1.7 cast speed, with ISS) the "Regeneration per second" is bumped up to ~9.9 focus per second.
So, a rogue passively regenerating is ~40% more effective than a hunter who is spamming steady shot without anything hindering him.

Any effect that slows steady shot casting, or any damage that prolongs the cast, widens the gap.

Any time a hunter uses any attack other than steady shot to deal damage, the passive regeneration is bumped back down to 4.58, or 4.41 without ISS.

Any time a hunter is unable to cast steady shot, due to minimum range, CC, LoS, the regeneration is bumped down.

So, as you can see, Even when the hunter is allowed to steady shot in a vaccum, which is almost never, the focus regeneration does not come close to what a rogue regenerates passively.

Please remember I am in no way suggesting that rogues are overpowered or underpowered, but I am simply comparing a new resource, focus, to its closest cousin in the game that has existed forever, energy.

Slow resource regeneration compared to other classes is one of the main issues with hunter in PvP.

B. The Pillar Dilemma

The pillar itself has been the greatest enemy of hunters in arena since arena was introduced. The problem is not with LoS in itself, as every caster has to deal with that, but the problem is in the way the pillar interacts with a minium range.

Simply put, as a hunter, if you are chasing someone behind a pillar, you go around and are standing next to them on the opposite side. As any caster, you would now be able to attack the person, until they go to the other side. Naturally, you are still subject to interrupts, but you are free to use any instants and or fakecast the interrupt, or otherwise CC anyone that might be interrupting, until which the target runs to the opposite side again, in which you repeat the process.

As a hunter, you run to the opposite side, and are standing next to them. Now, you cannot attack him, as you have to run an additional 5 yards past them to attack, by which point they are already on the other side of the pillar without you having a chance to damage them.

This is especially troublesome as in dalaran sewers, there isn't actually 5 yards of space behind the pillar for you to stand on, so your opponent can literally stand there as long as he desires and there isn't anything you can do about it. If you jump down and attack, they just run around the pillar, and you are forced to run halfway across the map and back to be able to attack them, in which situation they simply go back behind the box and you are back where you started.

I am not suggesting that the minimum range be removed, I am simply identifying a problem in the arena that hunters alone face due to their unique mechanics. Solutions come later.

C. The Hybrid Problem

A lot of classes, including hunters have problems with this. This is basically the fact that since we are neither a physical melee class nor a ranged spell class but some abomination inbetween. This leads to qwerky mechanics that shouldn't happen. A strange example would be this odd scenario, in which you almost never see, but gives you an idea of how the hybrid problem happens. Back in WoTLK (I have not tested it currently) a mage could counterspell your revive pet cast, and actually spell lock your chimera shot for 8 seconds. Who knew, right?

A current problem that we face every day is that chimera shot is a physical ability which deals magic damage. This causes the entire ability to be immuned by hand of protection, which is only supposed to prevent physical damage, and chimera shot clearly does no physical damage.

This also leads to awkward gearing requirements, such as having to gem for spell penetration that only affects half of your abilities. A full caster gains all of the benefit from spell penetration, while a full melee, such as a warrior, does not require spell penetration at all.

Again, hunters are not the only class that are affected by this problem, but it is something that hurts us and should be fixed in the base game design.

Other problems with being a hybrid is sometimes your abilities are subject to spell requirements, such as spell hit, which is usually required to be much higher, and thus they would have to gear for additional hit if they wanted to not miss, while the additional hit rating only had partial benefit.

Occasionally, abilities will be subject to spell crit as well. This currently happens on serpent sting, and I am pretty sure other classes have this problem as well. As an agility class, my base critical chance is 20.28% in PvP gear, and my spell crit is at 7.55%. This means, I lose a significant % of my crit chance on my dots, while a pure class who only uses melee or spell crit tables would not.

Another example is that I cannot use trap launcher while either disarmed or silenced. Other classes only have to deal with one or the other, but I am subject to the penalties of both.

D. Steady shot Casting penalties

This kind of ties together all of the above into one example, the fact that attack speed slows reduce the cast time of steady/cobra shot.

While one might argue that casters suffer this penalty as well with cast speed reduction

1. It reduces our resource regeneration. Bottom line, no one else has this problem. Warriors potentially come close, but it only reduces the rage they get from auto-attacks. Warriors have many many ways to generate rage and auto-attacks are only a small part. Warriors even get rage from using rage!

2. There are vastly more attack speed slows in the game than there are cast speed slows. Additionally, all the attack speed slowing effects apply automatically and usually have very long durations, 30-40 seconds. Cast speed slows have to be manually applied at a cost, and only last 10 seconds.

3. Additonally, casters have the option to use instants while they are slowed. We are forced to cast because we have to cast to gain resource, and of course attack speed slows never wear off because of the long durations and ease of application.

All other classes who are affected by attack speed slows only have it affect their white damage, not their abilities, and most definatley not their resource regeneration. This is a mechanic that affects Hunters and no one else.

E. Poor Ability Design

1. Our defenses. We have very little. As an agility class, the design is to have a high base amount of dodge.
For examples sake(All in PvP Gear):
Feral druids (in cat form) have 30% dodge
Rogues have 20% dodge
Enhancement shamans have 15% dodge
My hunter has 4.53% dodge

Like, where did it all go?
I used to have a lot in BC and WoTLK. It mysteriously vanished, and what did I get to compensate? Nothing.
I have no more base damage reduction like other casters have, spriests, frost armor, boomkin, soul link, etc.
I have no self healing.
I have no damage reduction cooldowns. I have one defensive cooldown, which is more of a "time out" which I also had with back when I had my dodge. Hunters have the least effective health (Total health + the amount of mitigation/avoidance you have that reduces the damage, I.E. someone with 100k hp, who has 10% damage reduction, has 110k effective hp, since it would take 110k actual damage to kill them) with no self healing or defenses.

2. Clunky mechanics like trap launcher, and traps in general having to use two abilities to cc, making us unable to use one of our best abilities. Addtionally we are unable to use frost trap while using freezing. Other classes do not have to decide between their CC and another good ability. It would be like a mage unable to use frost nova if they polymorphed, or a warlock unable to use howl of terror if they used death coil. Our CC also does not share the same mechanics are more common CC's, such as not breaking on our own dots, or a glyph that removes dots.

3. Abilities that do not scale. The most noticeable offender is the SV spec. This falls into the "Hybrid penalties" as I was talking about earlier. The ability is made like a caster, it scales off of your stats, not your weapon damage + stats. If I use a level 1 bow, it does the same damage. Hunters are not casters and our abilities need to scale PROPERLY like MM abilities. MM is not better designed spec, people just play it because it is less bad. Raptor strike scales with nothing but your level. Tooltip: Deal melee weapon damage + 395. All traps have poor scaling as well, even on the PTR which supposedly fixed this.

Another major offender is Kill Command, the ability does not scale with weapon damage, only stats.

4. Kill command is probably the most awkward ability in the game. The entire beastmastery tree revolves around this button. It scales from your attack power, and when you use it, you don't use it, your pet does. Your pet has to be in melee range of the target for you to use the ability, which costs your resource. No other ability in the game is deisgned this way. If your pet is not in range, you can potentially be focus capped and lose out on regeneration, or lose damage by not using it on cooldown. Other pet-type classes (Like demo warlocks, UH dk's, kinda) do damage while the pet doing a significant portion of the damage. Bm hunters damage is channeled through the pet, and they don't do it themselves. Also, we cannot use this ability while silenced. Kind of awkward to not be able to use our main damage ability as a physical damage dealer while silenced, huh?

5. Widow venom. We have the only MS in the game that has to be manually applied, and it costs us a GCD and focus. EVERY OTHER ms is automatic.

6. We are the only pet class in the game that does not have a way to instantly revive out pet. Everyone else does. Instead, we have to do a full 10 second cast. I really don't even know how this is overlooked.

7. Aspects are extemely irrelevant now. Hunters simply macro everything since they are off GCD. You don't actually manually swap aspects anymore. All the current aspect mechanic does is widen the gap between good players and inexperienced ones who do not know of the macro yet.

8. Roar of Recovery. Cunning pet talent, restores 30 focus / 3 minute cooldown. It used to be 30% mana on a 3 minute cooldown, now it is 30% focus on a 3 minute cooldown. They didn't even take the time to realize that 30 focus is an extremely small amount compared to 30% mana. It isn't even enough for a chimera shot. This is just an example of how little effort was put into converting hunters to focus from mana. You would think a class which underwent the largest change to any class in the history of the game MIGHT be warranted a little more attention.

2.2. Skill capped

It has been said that hunters are one of the hardest classes to play well, and that is one of the main reasons why we do so poorly, less people can play the hunter to the potential. This section will basically discuss why hunters are hard to play.

A. Hunters are bad.

Naturally, playing a worse class is harder to play. The opponent starts out with the advantage of not being a hunter, thus you have to be better than him in order to win. This is a pretty generic statement across any game. Playing on a higher difficulty setting means you have to be better to win.

In WoW, playing a hunter (Or any other underpowered class, could apply to PvE as well) is essentially setting the difficulty slider higher.
B. Keybindings

Hunters, along with a few other classes like warlocks and shamans, require many, many more keybindings to play to the potential that most other classes. I am not saying hunters have the most keybindings in the game, that usually depends on the player, whether or not they want a lot of additional macros that do very specific things, but as for minimum amount, hunters are one of the highest, if not the, in the game.

As an example, for those of you who do not know what a hunter might use regularly, I will list what I have bound, in no specific order.

Chimera shot / hawk macro
Readiness
Raptor strike
Wing clip
Silencing shot / mouseover silencing shot macro
Snake trap
Freezing trap
Frost trap
Explosive trap
Deterrence
Tranquilizing shot / Mouseover tranq macro
Scatter shot / Mouseover scatter macro
Disengage
Kill shot / hawk macro
Steady shot / fox macro
Steady shot / hawk macro
Concussive shot / mouseover concussive shot macro
Serpent sting
Widow venom
Arcane shot / hawk macro / Cancelaura macro
Aimed shot / hawk macro
Rapid fire / Trinket Macro
Hunter's Mark
Distracting shot
Camoflauge
Multi-shot
Trap Launcher
Feign Death
Bandage
Flare
Aspect of the Cheetah
Mount
Cobra shot / fox macro (For when I need to shoot, but do not want to proc bleed)
Cobra shot / Hawk macro (It would be wasteful to use cobra shot while stationary and not be in hawk for more damage)
Scare beast
Pet Special Ability
Roar of Sacrifice / Mouseover roar of sacrifice
Master's Call / Mouseover master's call
Intervene / Roar of Recovery
Racial / Trinket
Pet callback macro
Focus Silence macro
Cower
Bullheaded
Dismiss pet
Call pet 1
Call pet 2
Engineering glove tinker
Mend Pet
Revive pet
Healthstone / Miscelleaneous other item
Aspect of the Hawk
Aspect of the Fox



That is not including other abilities I have bound, such as grenades, food, flying mount, misdirection, belt tinkers, but more of a "Bare minimum" of what any hunter muse have.

Note that I use mouseover macros. Better hunters than I do not, and instead use a keybinding for the ability on the target, and a keybind for the ability on the focus. They might also additionally use 3 keybindings for roar of sacrifice or master's call or intervene to target between themselves and any of their teammates. You can easily get up to 80+ if you want to bind everything. Also, nearly every ability I have keybound is a macro, even if I did not list it, such as /stopattack on all of it to stop a steady shot cast, or binding hawk to more things. More beginner hunters do not know of this.

Also, What I mean by X ability / Mouseover macro is this:

/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Silencing shot
/cast Silencing Shot



That will cast silencing shot on my target, and if I have a mouseover it will cast it on that. It requires more focus (IRL) to use, as I have to position my mouse correctly but I do not have to use an additonal keybind.

Simply put, having more buttons to press makes the class harder to play.

C. Resource Management

As I mentioned before, Focus is a shoddy system. I discussed how you have to be constantly casting steady shot to gain maximum resource regeneration. Because your resources do not regenerate passively, but instead, actively, unlike any other class, it is much more difficult to manage. Even if you spend half a second not doing anything, you are losing resource while other classes do not. But if you just steady shot, your damage is pathetic. Also, you have to steady shot in pairs to gain improved steady shot, and any steady shots after the first two, you use cobra shot to gain more damage.

Additonally, any time you are crowd controlled, you are losing resource regeneration. Any time you are ATTACKING, you lose resource regeneration. Any time the target is Los, you lose resource regeneration. No other class has to deal with these things.

D. Unforgiving CC

Hunter CC is one of the most difficult in the game to use. While we do not have to actually cast it, it requires multiple keypresses. To trap someone, you have to:
1. Activate trap launcher
2. Monkey blind/scatter shot
3. Manually click on your screen where you want it to go

We are the only class that has to manually place our CC on the game terrain instead of casting it on a target, this alone casues unavoidable human error that no other class has to deal with. It requires you to be IRL hitcapped, something you can't gem for. (Get off me mages with your ring of frost, it has a HUGE area of effect compared to traps, and you only have to press one button, and you aren't using it regularly.)

You can also gain benefit from waiting longer on scatter shot before actually trapping, to make them stay CC'd longer (I.E, putting the trap under them with 2 seconds left of scatter, vs putting it down as soon as scatter is on them) If you wait, you potentially gain 2 seconds longer of total CC, however it increases the chance of it failing.

The opponent can simply walk/intervene on top of the desired trap, which can make it fail, or they can stun/disarm/silence you in which case you cannot use trap launcher, and the scatter wears off. You will be unable to trap them for 30 seconds while scatter is on CD, unless a teammate sets up a CC for you, something no other class has to do. While it is effective to chain CC, no other class has to have someone cc them in place so you can CC.

Additonally, unlike most CC's in the game, ours break on one damage, and we have no way to remove dots from the target prior to CC, such as mages have with glyph of polymorph. Also, most classes do not have their own dots break their cc's, if they don't have something that removes dots entirely. It requires us to be aware and think ahead, so we don't accidently dot a target with a bleed effect that we have no control over.

Also, if our CC fails in any way, we cannot do it again for 30 seconds. Unlike mages/warlocks who have no cooldown.


2.3. Talents

The hunter has a lot of qwerky and/or mismitched talents that need to be fixed.

First: All talent effects that affect the focus of your pet are worthless as pet focus is bugged and randomly will reset itself to full for no reason. This happens pretty regularly as the pet is attacking. No one knows why. Naturally this bug should be fixed, and then these talents will become useful again.

A. Beast Mastery

1. Pathfinding. Speed increase on aspect of the cheetah is nearly worthless. Guild perks give faster movement speed. All other talents that give mount speed also give another useful effect, to countert he fact that a talent to increase mount speed is essentially worthless, and give a higher % increase to mount speed. Paladins get 15%, and 15% base movement speed, as well as resource regeneration when afflicted by various CC effects. Death knights get 20% increased speed, as well as a reduction on the duration of snares.

2. Spirit Bond. 2% of total health every 10 seconds and increases total healing received by 10%. The second part is useful, but the first part is pretty worthless.

3. Improved mend pet. 2 points for a 50% chance on tick to remove ONE curse, magic, poison, or disease, not all of them. Each tick takes 3 seconds inbetween. A pretty big investment for something that isn't guaranteed, and which takes so long to happen.

4. Killing streak. This talent grants us a increased damage on kill command after two kill commands critically strike in a row. The effect on this buff lasts 7 seconds. The cooldown on kill command, which naturally is activated as soon as you get the buff, since to get it kill command has to crit, is 6 seconds. That means, you have one second to use the bonus damage buff after the cooldown on kill command comes off. Yeah. I tip my hat to you blizzard, this is probably one of the DUMBEST mechanics in the game.

5. Bestial wrath & The beast within. The majority of BM's damage comes from within this 10 second window. It is entirely too easy to lock out their damage by a stun, or cc, or silence (Cannot kill command while silenced). You can also simply LoS a hunter, or deadzone them until it wears off.

6. Beast mastery. The additonal 4 talents are nice, but the ability to tame exotic pets is not all that impressive of a 31 point talent. The pets do no additonal damage but just have some aiblitys that are better. A bm hunter has to sacrifice one of their best abilities, a disarm, root, or 4 second CC's to be able to get a self heal which every other class has baseline.

7. Scaling. As mentioned before, Kill command needs to scale with weapon damage as well as RaP, similar to arcane, chimera, or aimed shot.

B. Marksmanship

1. Efficiency. Why does it not work on kill command as well?

2. Improved steady shot. Extremely difficult to keep up in PvP, and only works with steady, not cobra shot.

3. Careful aim. Why is this getting nerfed to 90%? The window in which we get to use it in PvP is small enough as it is.

4. Piercing Shots. We have no control over when this happens and the bleed effect breaks our CC.

5. Silencing shot. Needs to be 40 yard range. Tranquilizing shot should be 40 yard range as well.

6. Trueshot aura. There is no incentive to take this talent. Other classes take the talent because it has a selfish buff component (Such as +4% strength) or any paladin can bring the effect baseline.

7. Termination. Any target sub 25% health will be healed to full before your steady shot finishes casting, and you really shouldn't be casting an ability that does no damage when a target is that low. Additonally, why does this affect cobra shot, while improved steady shot and peircing shots does not? I don't get it, are we supposed to use cobra shot? Are we not? The talents give me mixed messages.

8. Resistance is futile. A joke of a talent. Gives us access to a free kill command, the worst designed ability in the game, something we would never want to use to begin with. Additonally, it does not give us a free attack, it restores the focus used after we use the attack. This makes it difficult to use, as the buff could potentially wear off before we have enough focus / pet is in position to use it. Besides of all the clunky mechanics, kill command does pathetic damage as any spec but BM.

9. Master Marksman. RNG is bad, mmmkay?

10. Rapid Recuperation. This is like what rogues get from recuperate. Except ours is on a 3 minute cooldown, with a 15 second duration. Also, since it is applied every 3 seconds, you don't actually get the last tick, as rapid fire wears off.

11. Posthaste. When a mage blinks, their speed boost is over twice as good as ours. Also, theirs is in tier 2 of a talent tree, while ours is in tier 6.

C. Survival

1. Hunter vs. Wild. This talent has no effect when you are constantly being trained, as you never will actually be at maximum health. It only might help against hard swaps, but we have deterrence for that.

2. Improved Serpent sting. This talent is to compensate for the fact that serpent sting does not scale based off of ranged crit, but instead spell crit. We should not have to spec for this bandaid fix. Additionally, MM and BM don't benefit from this as we don't take it, so we are stuck with the bad mechanics while survival gets the band-aid.

3. Survival tactics. -4% chance for traps to be resisted. That will do a whole lot of good in 4.2 when they work with spell pen, and won't be resisted anyways. Have they even mentioned updating this talent in 4.2? Nope.

4. Counterattack. A 5 second root when we parry. Oh, right, we have a 5% parry chance. Deterrence does not parry anymore, so this ability never procs. Additonally, if the opponent has expertise, it will never happen at all. Did they update this ability when they removed parry from deterrence? Nope.

5. Wyvern sting & Noxious stings. Normally, survival has a default -10% damage in PvP because serpent sting has zero dispel proteciton. If you have serpent sting on the target, wyvern sting will remove it and you will have to re-apply it after wyvern sting is off, otherwise you lose 10% damage. Also, wyvern sting only lasts 6 seconds in PvP. What is up with that?

6. Sniper Training. Bonus damage to steady and cobra shot after being stationary for 6 seconds. Again, the talents confuse me, why does this affect steady shot? Why would survival use steady shot? Obviously a relic from ancient cataclysm beta that was never looked at again. Also, you will never stand still for 6 seconds in PvP, so you will never get to use this.

7. Black Arrow. Damage is crap for the cooldown, even with 40% buff in 4.2. It is based off of your spell crit, improved serpent sting doesn't bandaid fix this one. How are these broken mechanics still in this game at this point, seriously. Additonally, this talent has no dispel protection, and is on a long cooldown, so it never actually has any affect in PvP.

8. Scaling. As mentioned before, Explosive shot, serpent sting, black arrow, and traps need to scale with weapon damage + RAP coefficient, similar to chimera, aimed, or arcane shot.

2.4. Glyphs
Here we discuss glyphs that either have no effect or are underwhelming.


A. Prime

1. Glyph of Kill Command. This is a poor glyph because BM is the least focus dependant spec of the three.

2. Glyph of Aimed Shot. 5 focus is not enough to make this glyph worth using. Also, you never get the opportunity to use aimed shot often enough in PvP to make this glyph desireable over other choices.

3. Glyph of Chimera Shot. This glyph does not have enough usability. In PvP, you never get the benefit from it because you are very unlikely to be able to use chimera shot every 9 seconds on the dot. In PvE it requires a very specific haste amount to be able to get benfit from it

4. Glyph of the Dazzled Prey. The design here is to increase hunter PvP focus generating without increasing PvE efficiency. This is a good design, but the glyph is too underwhelming to have much effect, and as it is a prime is does not get used.

5. Glyph of Kill Shot. This glyph bugs out often in PvP, as it often will consider a target "dead" when it is not and have no effect. This generally happens when they have an absorb effect at low health.

6. Glyph of Serpent Sting. For MM and BM, this is a 26 dps increase. That is right, a whole 26. The benefit would be slightly higher, but not much. Extremely underwhelming for a prime glyph. I think this is the worst prime glyph in the game, actually.

B. Major

1. Glyph of Deterrence. 10 seconds off a 2 minute cooldown. No surprise here that no hunter uses this glyph.

2. Glyph of Immolation Trap. While this actually does increase the damage of immolation trap, it does not increase it enough for the traps to be viable options in PvP.

3. Glyph of Scatter Shot. Lol, Yeah, because I need that often, don't I?

4. Glyph of Snake Trap. This one is funny because the snakes have so low health that even with -90% damage they still die in one aoe.


3. Solutions

So far, everything has been describing what is wrong with the hunter class. In this section, we will go through each problem, or group of problems, in an effort to present a REASONABLE solution that fixes it.

Please understand that I am in no way suggesting EVERYTHING should be implemented, that would likely make us overpowered. I am simply suggesting solutions for various problems that the Hunter class faces

3.1. Core Mechanics


A. Focus.


As we discussed before, focus regeneration is too low. The trick is to increase it in PvP without increasing it in PvE, as hunters (At least MM, SV and BM would be with a few scaling issues fixed) do fine in PvE.

Obviously Blizzard forsaw this, and put a bonus on our PvP gear: 5% increased focus regeneration, however this bonus is not even close to sufficient. It would take roughly a minute and a half for the amount of bonus focus we get from the 4pc to give us enough additional focus for an arcane shot.

Quite frankly, in order to bring hunters up to par in resource regeneration, there has to be a significant buff.

Solutions:

1. Change the 4pc bonus to increase the amount of focus steady/cobra shot grants by 5. This would effectively increase our focus per second from ~9.9 to close to ~12.5 per second while casting (Counting the loss of the current 4pc which is ~.4 focus per second.)

2. Change the 4pc bonus to decrease the cast time of steady/cobra by .6 seconds. This would increase our focus per second while casting to ~12.38 (Counting the loss of the current 4pc)

Additionally, as mentioned in section 2.1-D, the effect that attack speed slows have versus hunters is too powerful. There is no counter to it and no other class is affected by it.

Solution: No other way around it. Steady/cobra shot MUST not be affected by attack speed snares. Aimed shot and autoshot can still be affected but it is not balanced for it to hinder our resource regeneration as badly as it does.


B. The Pillar Dilemma.


Unfortunetly, our base class mechanics mean we will always be hurt more than anyone else by the pillar. I do not think removing the minimum range deadzone is the proper action, instead I believe the best way to fix the problem is by giving hunters an ability to get around it.

Ice(Frost) trap should be unliked from the freezing trap cooldown.

They should not be linked in the first place, I discussed this earlier in section 2.1-E-2 regarding ability design. Frost trap is our best ability against pillar humping, and we are forced to not use it because then we cannot CC.

Secondly, Dalaran sewers needs to be modified. Either the scale of the map needs to be increased, or the position of the pillars need to be moved closer to the center. Possibly a combination of both. It is unfair for this map to be so biased against one class in particular.


C. The Hybrid Problem


In order to fix this, mechanics for many classes in the game would have to be adressed. It would probably be a good idea for a revamp, but it would be harder than most changes and It could potentially cause other balance issues.

1. Hybrid classes should not have to gem spell penetration, or spell penetration should be removed.

Frankly, spell penetration has become a silly arms race in this game that is no longer neccessary. Guy A puts up resistance aura, so Guy B puts on 195 spell pen, and now both of the effects are irrelvant. This really should not be in the game.

2. All of a classes abilities need to be on the same crit/hit tables

I should not have abilities that crit based on my spell critical strike chance. That is poor design.

3. Abilities should not be subjectable to both penalties of groups.

Examples:

Trap Launcher should not be able to be stopped by being silenced OR disarmed, one or the other. Hunters should not be stopped by silences because we are not casters.
Chimera shot should not be immuned by hand of protection, if it does nature damage.

E. Poor Ability Design

1. Defenses.


1.1. Deterrence

To make hunters less easy to kill, several changes should be done.

Deterrence should be usable while stunned.

Hunters are too easy to burst down. Most classes have damage reduction or abilities they can use while stunned to keep them alive. I am not suggesting deterrence REMOVE stun however. There would also have to be a few changes to deterrences effect:
Deterrence currently does not properly deflect spells while you are CC'd and under the effect of deterrence (Usually due to latency of them both going off at the same time). Melee attacks and ranged attacks still properly miss.

Deterrence now causes spells to miss, instead of deflect.

That should solve that.


1.2. Damage reduction


The talent, "Hunter vs. Wild" which increases a hunter's total stamina by 5/10/15% should be changed to:

"Hunter vs. Wild" now reduces the damage you take by 8/15%

This would change it to a 2 point talent, and allow all hunters who dip into SV a more streamlined process, they would take 3 points in pathing, and 2 points here, or 2 points in improved serpent sting.

Damage reduction is much more valuable than base health because if you are constantly being trained, the increased health has no actual effect unless you are healed to full, and you almost never will be. It also becomes easier to keep someone being trained alive who has damage reduction.


2. Outdated Mechanics


2.1. CC

Either allow hunters to somehow remove dots on a target via a glyph, or have piercing shots not break CC.

Trap launcher should convert the trap abilities to targetable attacks with 1.5 second base cast time.


2.2. Poor scaling and kill command


Serpent sting, black arrow, kill command, explosive shot, and raptor strike need to scale with weapon damage as well as RAP.

They should be given coefficients that effectively give a hunter in BiS gear a DPS increase, a hunter in poor gear a DPS decrease, and a hunter who has average gear shouldn't see much of a change.

This keeps survival and beast mastery from slipping away into nonviability as people gear, and making MM best by default. MM is currently the best DPS spec because it is the ONLY one that have abilities that scale.

Kill command needs a redesign:

Kill command should be an activated effect on your pet similar to intimidation, that is a 10 second buff that will go off at the next available opportunity.

This fixes all the range issues on your pet

Also:

Aspect of the Hawk should scale based on your RAP, not a static number
Hunters Mark should scale based on RAP, not a static number.

2.3. Aspects

Aspects are no longer a part of the class. No hunter manually swaps aspects, they simply use a macro. The only thing this results in is aspect spamming, and a larger skill gap between hunters who do have the macros and hunters who don't.

Add an aspect that I jokingly call "Aspect of the THUNDERCOUGARFALCONBIRD" that combines the effect of aspect of the hawk and aspect of the fox.

This eliminates the problem, while providing a slight DPS buff to steady/cobra while moving. This also reduces the amount of keybindings a hunter has to have.


2.4. Other poor abilities

1. Widow venom sucks. Plain and simple.

This effect needs to be baked into something so it goes on automatically like every other MS in the game.

I don't think anyone really cares what, it would be easiest to put it on arcane shot.

2. No pet res.

We are the only pet class in the game that cannot revive our pet.

Either give all pets "Heart of the Phoenix" baseline with a shorter cooldown, or make glyph of revive pet cast instantly with an internal cooldown on the glyph.

I really shouldn't have to explain this, and this really should already be in the game.


D. Skill Capped


How can we make hunters easier to play?


1. Keybind Consolidation

1. Wing clip. Remove wing clip, and make raptor strike snare the target for 10 seconds. Also, remove counterattack, and make the talent root the target when you raptor strike for 5 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown.
2. Bake Widow venom into serpent sting. I went over this
3. Aspect combining would help, I covered this.
4. Making trap launcher a toggle (Like the combat rogue ability) would reduce the amount of keybinds we have to use.


2. Resource Management

With the changes I already suggested to the hunter PvP bonus, and removing snares on our shots in 3.1-A, resources should be significantly easier to manage, as there is simply more to go around in PvP.


3. Forgiving CC

With the changes I already discussed in 3.1-C-2.1 and 3.1-B, this should fix the problem of making CC easier on the hunter.

3.3. Talents

A. Beast Mastery

Problems with these talents were discussed in section 2.3-A. Here are some possible solutions.
1. Pathfinding.
Increase movement speed by 8/15%, and mounted movement speed by 10/20%

2. Spirit Bond.
2% per 10 seconds changed to 6% per 10 seconds

The heal was underwhelming

3. Improved mend pet.
Your mend pet ticks have a 50/100% chance to remove a poison, magic, curse, or disease.

4. Killing streak.
The buff now lasts 20 seconds

This is to ensure you have plenty of time to use it.

5. Bestial wrath & The beast within.
The Beast Within causes you to be immune to effects that cause loss of control of your character, but not snares/roots

This is to ensure your main damage ability is not as easily shut down, but still counterable.

6. Beast mastery.
Exotic pet's base attack abilities (claw, bite, smack, etc) should do higher damage than non-exotic pets

A Major change to bm could help streamline the hunter class:
BM's "Signature ability" Intimidation is now replaced with kill command, and intimidation is made baseline for all hunters

This ensures that you can buff the damage on BM's Kill Command without affecting any other spec. This also makes the three talent trees more streamlined, each one has a signature attack.

B. MM

Problems with these talents were discussed in section 2.3-B. Here are some possible solutions.

1. Efficiency.
Reduces Focus cost of Kill Command as well

2. Improved steady shot.
Duration increased to 15 seconds

This is to make it easier to keep up in PvP

3. Careful aim.
Stays the same at 80% health.

With the rest of the rebalancing between the specs, it is not needed.

4. Piercing Shots.
This effect no longer breaks CC's

It is explained why this is needed in sections 2.1-E-2 and 2.2-D.

5. Silencing shot.
Needs to be 40 yard range. Tranquilizing shot should be 40 yard range as well.

6. Trueshot aura.
Adds 4% agility passive.

Selfish buff component to make this talent actually taken when other people bring the same buff.

7. Termination.
Increases the damage and/or critical strike chance of Kill Shot.

You never cast steady shot when the target is low health. This would do a better job of helping us finish the target.

8. Resistance is futile.
Changed from a free kill command to a free Arcane Shot

Kill command should really be a BM only move. Even if that never happens, Arcane shot for MM does the same damage as Kill Command, and it requires less keybindings and is easier to use. For QoL sake, and to make the talent actually taken, should be changed to arcane shot.

9. Master Marksman.
Chance to proc increased from 60% to 100%, but the stacks required for activated have been increased from 5 to 8

RNG is bad.

10. Rapid Recuperation.
Focus is added per second as opposed to every 3 seconds

This is to prevent the last tick from dropping off when rapid fire ends.

11. Posthaste.

Speed increased to 60% for 4 seconds
or
Causes Disengage to remove snares

C. Survival

1. Hunter vs. Wild.
Reduces damage taken by 8/15%.

The appropriate change for this talent was discussed earlier in 3.1-E-1.1

2. Improved Serpent sting.
Causes your serpent sting and black arrow to restore focus equal to the cost of the ability when it is dispelled. If black arrow is dispelled, the cooldown is reset. Additonally, the 30% instant damage from serpent sting is applied to Black Arrow as well.

This gives a viable dispel protection to all specs, and espectially survival. You get free damage every time they dispel from the 30% of damage done instantly.

3. Survival tactics.
-4% chance for traps to be resisted changed to .5/1 second off the trap arming time

Removes a soon-to-be outdated mechanic and gives hunters the options for quicker traps.

4. Counterattack.
Your raptor strike roots the target for 5 seconds when used, this effect has a 30 second cooldown.

This was discussed in keybind consolidation in section 3.2-D in which raptor strike was merged with wing clip.

5. Wyvern sting & Noxious stings.
Wyvern sting is no longer a sting, such that it will no longer remove serpent sting.
Noxious stings additionally causes damage from Serpent Sting and and Black Arrow to not break the effects of Scatter shot, Freezing trap, Wyvern Sting, and Bad Manner

Survival is a very dot-dependent spec, and with all of our CC breaking on any and all damage, it is hard to play in PvP.

6. Sniper Training.
Damage bonus is gained after moving consecutively for 6 seconds as well as being stationary for 6 seconds

7. Black Arrow.
Now also applies the "8% additonal magic damage taken" raid debuff that wind serpents (as well as other classes) possess. It should not be able to be dispelled or at least have a penalty.

8. Scaling.

As mentioned before:
Explosive shot, serpent sting, black arrow, and traps need to scale with weapon damage + RAP coefficient, similar to chimera, aimed, or arcane shot.

3.4 Glyphs

Here some solutions to crappy glyphs will be discussed.

A. Prime

1. Glyph of Kill Command.
New options:
Your Kill command deals 10% increased damage.
Your Kill command has a 5% increased chance to critically strike.
Reduces the cooldown on Kill Command by 1 second.

2. Glyph of Aimed Shot.
New options:
Your Aimed shot has a 10% increased chance to critically strike
Your Aimed shot now ignores 50% of your targets armor

Armor penetration is pretty important for aimed shot. This would overall not increase damage in PvE that much as hunters still do not use aimed shot outside of dynamic haste effects and careful aim phase. Additonally, bosses have less base armor than most players, so the effect is not as noticeable in PvE.

3. Glyph of Chimera Shot.
New options:
Increases the damage done by Chimera shot by 10%.
Increases the Healing done by Chimera Shot by 5%.

This can give us the option to get some usability out of the glyph in PvP, or give us more healing, both of which we need.

4. Glyph of the Dazzled Prey.
New:
Your steady shot deals 40% increased damage versus dazed targets.

This is a perfect way to increase hunter sustained DPS without affecting PvE, because lets face it... Steady shot blows.


5. Glyph of Kill Shot.
New:
The cooldown on kill shot now automatically resets, with a 6 second cooldown on this effect

What is the purpose of the "dead" modifier? Am I going to swap targets and Kill shot that guy at 100% hp?


6. Glyph of Serpent Sting.
New:
You deal 5% additional damage to targets who are afflicted by serpent sting.


B. Major

1. Glyph of Deterrence.
New:
Deterrence now removes all harmful effects

Hunters badly need a dot wipe, dot classes hard counter us in arenas and deterrence normally does nothing against it.

2. Glyph of Immolation Trap.
New: Increases the damage done by immolation trap by 100%

3. Glyph of Scatter Shot.
New: Your Scatter Shot now removes all damage-over-time effects from the target.

4. Glyph of Snake Trap.
New: Your Snake Trap no longer summons snakes, but instead roots the target for 6 seconds.

An option for people who don't want snakes messing with things, and makes all hunters not forced to take entrapment. Basically, an optional bear trap replacement for snake trap.

4. Nerfs to compensate for DPS gains in PvE

Okay, so with any buff there is potential to make hunters overpowered in DPS in PvE.

Please note that currently, BM and SV are lagging behind greatly. None of the proposed changes would make these two specs overpowered, but they would bring them up to level.

The only spec at risk of becoming overpowered would be MM. How do we stop that? You can't just nerf MM's dps because then PvP dps becomes broken, and we lose the point of buffing us.

Option 1:

MM's mastery: Chance on attack to proc an additonal attack.

PvP hunters naturally run with very little mastery, as we would rather have crit. Generally, that is the case for PvE hunters as well, but there is no resilience on the gear so they end up with much larger pools of mastery.

If the effect of the mastery was lowered, PvE hunters would lose more damage than PvP hunters.

Option 2:

MM's Perk: Artisan quiver.
This increases auto shot damage by 15%. Lowering this would lower our PvE damage, without overly affecting PvP damage, which mostly consists of abilities used together to create burst.

A PvE hunter's damage is easily about 40-50% auto shot. Lowering the damage of auto shot would impact our damage significantly, which can outweigh any buffs the spec had which put it over the top. This would also not be likely to lower MM's burst potential in PvP.


End of Notes

My only additional thought is possibly changing appropriate pets to do a basic elemental type damage (same amount) besides the physical "Bite" against plate wearers
Kudos Bowjitsu, good to see this back on the forums again as it's own thread.
Thank you. I have felt strongly about making a re-post concerning it all. It was unfortunate that Bandet was banned and our discussions were deleted.

Hopefully, we can continue discussing the issues with our class as it pertains to both DPS in PvE and PvP.
Before all the haters come on, I have already cleared this with WoW support team; if anyone has an issue with this, I can post the emails here or send them to whoever wants to know. This is not breaking the Code of Conduct.

That being said, thank you Bow for bringing back some of the critical, relevant information that we had thought was lost.
I assume multiple hunters (including myself) have it saved in a word document, so it will never really be gone. Anyway, anyone have an idea for a good topic of discussion to get this thread kick started?