No this isn't about PvP...

Where have all the Hunters gone? It seems many guilds are running with 1 or 2 total, whereas they will have 4-6 of other dps classes such as mages. Are hunters not considered as useful, or are people rerolling/mainswitching?

I have my little 68 hunter and considered the class as overall pretty useful, with good (albeit complex) damage potential.

Anyone able to shed some light on this?

The problem as I see it is the innate limitations with Hunters - there's very little raid synergy (more is coming in 2.1 - but it remains to be seen if that will shift the balance). All you get now is TSA, Expose Weakness if you're specced for it, and maybe something else I've forgotten (I've played every class but Hunter/Warrior...those never intrigued me). And of course, there's a Hunter's longevity issue with mana.

I'm biting the end of my tongue right now, because as a Mage...we really don't do much for raid synergy either. We get...Winter's Chill? Which is used by...only us. We get Fire Vulnerability, which is used by...only us and Locks...but most Locks are Affliction now. And we get Slow, which virtually no one has. I guess our saving grace is the almighty Polymorph, although I can count on one hand the number of times it's actually useful in Gruul's and beyond.

There is alot of reasons for hunters not being in guilds in that many numbers, a few reasons of the top of my head would be.

1. The hunter reputation, hunters have a bad reputation even though bigger guilds should know the benefits of having good hunters in a raid.

2. Group Synergy. A hunter is a tricky class to maximise dps for, in order for a hunter to really go all out they need a druid, shaman and a spriest. most guilds will usually find that its better to fit the spriest with a group of fire mages or warlocks, and fitting the druid and shaman along with 2 melee dps instead.
So because blizzard has this ranged class that uses mana but deals melee dmg it is very hard to accomodate more than 1-2 hunters needs in a raid, if at all. That leaves you with hunters in healer groups that struggle for mana, and the only reason you bring them is the odd Misdirect or kiting situation.

3. You already mentioned it, complex damage potential, in order to really let a hunter shine you need a good basic understanding of the mechanics that lie beneath. If a hunter isnt really aware of this it is very very visible on the dmg meters, further enhancing the bad reputation of hunters as a bad dps class.

More is probably to come as I get my head into it

Well, I've gone and started new class that I plan on raiding with. Blood Elf priest that character is around level 42. In my guild we have 5-6 solid hunters myself included. I am usually the raid leader so I have hard time timing my shots, mind you its still doable. But when I have to watch new recruits' performance and keeping an eye on someone who I know is weak especially if they got put on new duty for that night's raid, I tend to miss some of my shots thus lowering my and raid's dps.

Also if any lesson from the past is true, it means that we'll hit the limit of our abilities fairly quickly. Just like it happened with Naxxaramas. As people have mentioned, one way to boost hunter's dps is to put them in the group with Shadow Priest, Feral Druid and a Shaman, but that in turn can gimp other groups unless its the only hunter in the raid.

Blizzard should go ahead and implement "Presence", Plain Strider's beta ability, its an aura that regens 17mp/5 at level 60 and more at level 70.

Was that from that fabricated list of quirky pet abilities? I don't remember that being in an actual beta build..

Naw wasn't beta but its still in game files I should've said. My bad.

In terms of utility... uhm, Misdirection? Granted, there are diminishing returns to MD as your tanks' TPS improves, but it still lets the raid's DPS let loose that much sooner. Three Hunters in, say, a Magtheridon raid can set the MT with 15,000 threat within ~15 seconds of his release.

The chief problem, I suspect, is that Hunter is pretty hard to play well nowadays. As such, unless a Hunter has established himself as grasping his class, and generating significant DPS, it's difficult to justify bringing (or recruiting) Hunters instead of another Mage or Warlock. On top of this, even a great Hunter usually needs some help -- in mana regeneration -- to reach his or her maximum output. This can mean a Shadowpriest, or Judgement of Wisdom, or a pharmacy's breadth of mana regen consumables. It can also mean Aspect of the Viper, but that's a costly compromise to DPS.

Ultimately, as a concept, Hunter DPS is competitive with the other DPS classes, but the Hunters who make that concept reality are harder to find, and the cost-benefit analysis versus a Mage or Warlock is gloomy.

Their damage is pretty solid, if they are grouped with a Shadow Priest. Otherwise it requires heavy consumable usage to be competitive at all in most fights. Comparatively, Warlocks, Mages, and Rogues obviously don't need to be grouped with a Shadow Priest to do good damage so its arguable if its worth it to bring multiple Hunters over just bringing those other dps classes. The stigma thing is probably true, because there is a lot of crap hunters out there, and its harder to find hunters who aren't like the average retard.

There was a thread about how Hunters can do more PvE damage about a week ago.


Misdirection is nice, but could 3 Hunters all Misdirect at the same time to the MT?

Hunter is a the toughest to play dps class atm, since you have to time 3 shots as well as autoshot to maximize DPS, not to mention you have to pot to max your dps potential.

Once pets get buffed in 2.1, that should allow BM Hunters at least to lessen their need to worry about the pet being alive, which may mean they are easier to play.

I main-switched, mainly because I honestly just wasn't good enough at kiting to justify coming along as a hunter. I always thought I'd have found it exceptionally easy with a SNES joypad or something, but I'm just terrible with a mouse...

Anyway I have noticed the same thing - we have 1 hunter across 2 kara teams and scarcely any other active hunters. It just seems to me that if people want to roll dps, they prefer to play mages, warlocks or rogues, each of which do not seem to me to be as difficult to play moderately well - although I apologize in advance for that generalisation.

Has anyone seen any use for a hunter on Morogrim Tidewalker? Last night we sat 3 hunters and played one and the officers were still complaining that we should bring in either a rogue or AOE class. Is there anything a hunter can bring to that encounter? I've been using explosive trap when the murlocs come but that runs me oom pretty fast and I find myself just autoshotting to regen mana until the next murlocs come. It has been very frustrating (we recently renamed the hunter chat channel to sitters).
Also, on Hydross I was first on damage (using NR aura for tank) until I went out of mana and ran on steady shot/rank 1 arcane shot fumes at 55% and droppd to 9th overall by the end of the fight.

Our guild insists that Mages/Warlocks are better in the shadow priest group (we only have 1 atm). They then complain that our damage is worse than that of a feral druid so why bother bringing a hunter since they can't tank in a pinch. I told them to put the feral druid into a group of all paladins/resto druids (the spot that the hunter usually resides) and then compare the damage of an unsupported feral druid to unsupported hunter. Can anyone help me with a way to show the neccessity of mana regen support to hunters to my guild leaders?

Three Hunters who play together regularly can chain-MD pretty effectively. Fifteen seconds for three MDs is with flawless execution, 25 seconds is sloppier.

The pet survivability changes, coupled with Rift Stalker's two-piece bonus, should make pets largely fire-and-forget. I think testing is indicating ~27 HPS from the proc.

All our hunters (bar one) are all "farm alts" for healers. So they pretty much never see raids.

My guild is now working on SSC and all the way from Karazhan -> Mag we ran with 1 huner per 10man and no more than 3 per 25man. However, we seem to have the best hunters on our server. They can routinely break the top 5 on damage meters.

I'll agree that hunters are getting sparse but I think that their potential is vast. You all have to admit though, a poorly played hunter has got to be the most useless class in the game, while a well played hunter can be one of the best. I think the real issue here is that the class itself is completely dependant on having a good player behind the wheel, not so much the class mechanics alone.

BM is going to be crazy in 2.1. We have a legitimate reason being in the Shadow Priests group not only because it gives us mana but also gives our pet even more survivability and FI procs work for melee and casters and would be up at almost all times. FI is a more versatile group buff than TSA and due to Serpent Swiftness being rather amazing the hunter, without his pet, does more damage than an MM build (result of my own personal PTR tests).

Also bringing a Survival hunter to a raid in 2.1 will be a very good way to get back some of the lost damage from pots. A hunter in decent gear will have nearly 800 agility after raid buffs. If this same hunter picks up improved hunters mark then he would be providing 310 free AP to all physical damage classes in the raid. 110 from improved hunters mark and 200 from Exposed Weakness which is fairly easy to keep up at all times (and gives the Surv hunter a good reason to be in the Feral druids group). Survival DPS is not as good as the other two trees but it is close enough to justify the loss of DPS compared to the raid gain unlike the previous version of EW.

MM will still be about the same but they will naturally have higher damage just like the other specs with the pet enhancements with KC off the GCD and glancing blows not affecting their pets as much either. TSA is simply a perk but it may become more important with 2.1 due, again, to the new potting mechanics.

Hunters will be able to contribute quite a bit more to the raid after 2.1 in terms of damage and group/raid synergy. I believe Blizzard is on the right track in attempting to make not only our class raid viable in just personal damage but also a valuable asset to other members of the raid.

Hunters are an absolute god send for tricky trash pulls. We ran the Void Reaver packs without one and it was pretty much agony. I would prefer to have 2 in a raid at all times.

I love my class, but it is hard to keep up the enthusiam these days.
The niche for hunters is small and it comes down to movement fights.

my guild killed gruul twice
the first kill was a Gruul in "normal mode" with Shatter and all that, the second one was bugged (1 Ground Slam, no Silence)

The difference in the WWS Reports was quite astounding.
I did the same DPS in both fights which put me at #1 on the first kill but behind every caster in the second fight and as boomix said before you really have to focus to even get that DPS, while most mages and destro-locks can hammer on their "3"


but maybe this will all turn around in 2.1 with the new Expose Weakness and Hunter's Mark, which are hopefully both so good that I don't have to spec BM to do any noticable DPS

btw. I don't recall any raids where I got beaten by totally unbuffed casters, maybe the Alchemy Changes will help us too

Avatar.

=p

I agree though. For some reason it's really hard to find a hunter who knows the basics of shot rotations, mana usage, etc. If you get a couple of these hunters, it makes it look like hunter dps in general is suffering, but every once in awhile I run into one who can easily keep up with me.

Well new Hunter's mark works like Winter's Chill for mages. We will be losing steady amount of RAP from loss of alchemy but that 440 RAP gained from it will make up quite a bit. EW hunters with imp Mark will add quite a bit of AP per physical damage dealer.

I have some minimal optimistic expectations about upcoming patch and as Norwest mentioned every ranged weapon needs to be looked at from two perspectives. Factor in that connection lag and (if you're unlucky like I was) graphical lag from running at 4 FPS then your dps is going to suffer. Now if my new motherboard wasn't busted I would've been playing on my brand new shiny XFX 8800 video card with 0 graphical lag. Can't wait.

Tell your raid leader to replace Affliction Locks with Hunters in shadow priest groups . This is coming from an Affliction Lock, and a former Hunter. I know you guys need the mana far more than I need the VE. Affliction locks are completely self sustaining, between dark pact and siphon life, healing me on single target fights is a complete waste of mana unless I am taking incidental damage. Saving a dozen global cooldowns over a 10 minute fight is far less useful than putting your Hunters through consumable hell so they can keep doing DPS.

Our raid leader still generally slots our 1-2 Shadow Priests with Paladins and Mages, because they certainly have shown they can put out pretty massive performances, but there should be room for Hunters in those groups if the Warlocks are removed, and it's all the more important in 2.1 with pets getting buffed. The only problem being non affliction locks, who without a shadow priest put a huge strain on your healers.

Hunters never should have had mana to start with, but you are too intrinsically tied to mana at this point for Blizzard to implement a focus based solution like they should have done from day 1.

Perhaps this would have been good on Day 1, but if Hunters today had focus instead of mana, they really would blow stuff up.

The suggestion to put a Hunter with a Shadow Priest (instead of an Affliction Lock) is a good, especially because VE helps the pet live longer. However, not all groups have a Shadow Priest and if they do, they may not have room for a Hunter in those groups, even kicking Locks out of them.

I wouldn't really replace fire and forget affliction spec lock for a hunter in a raid, and this is coming from a player who stuck with the class from launch day.