Nerfage

I played a hunter pre-bc...

I did everything I could find and adapt my own playstlye to eek out every single drop of DPS I could. I knew exactly what I needed on gear to make my shots hit harder. . I knew how to chain trap before traps were usable in combat. 41 point tree's were released, I changed to acomidate. I leveled to 70, never straying from trying to get the most out of the tools I was given. At 62, I started playing around with steady shot... never used it much because I don't do much more than auto shot for solo DPS (keep the threat at the min so the mob never leaves the pet). I started using a macro to help with making sure I wasn't clipping or destroying my auto shots while in groups.

Since I was in a go no-where guild... I started leveling my paladin.

Up till then, I had no clue why people were so hard on hunters... no clue where the "HUNTER WEAPON" came from. I didn't understand why I had made friends as easily as I had.

Yup you guessed it, I ran into a huntard. I auctualy grouped with several of them, much to my dismay. I was out rolled on a weapon that compleated Sul'thraze the Lasher by a hunter. I still to this day don't understand why he would want that weapon. it does 0 for him, other than look cool. This was on top of him doing some auto's then jumping in for some melee... then hoping back out again... back and forth... Pulling agro off me at the begining of the fights, never once using FD to lose agro.

I was extreamly upset, and let him know.
The short version of our conversastion:
me: You have no clue what being a hunter is about. You suck as a hunter.
him: You realy need to get out of the house. It's just a game.

I didn't have a responce, I was just so stuned... "it's just a game"... I'm sure thats what the coachs are telling their football team in the locker rooms. What the FPS clans are saying when reveiwing a match.

I wouldn't even be posting this in here if it wasn't for the second, and third hunter I ran into. All gave me variations of "it's just a game" as an excuse for why they play poorly.

I ran into a couple of good hunters.. most were alts of course.

I don't think the class is too technical... I think it's too easy. Maybe I'm over sensitive to how people are playing their hunters... who know's... I do know that my hunter will stay an alt for a while. Too much of a bad taste in my mouth. Sides, I have a more challenging project... a Prot Palidan... feels just like playing a hunter when looking around the forums. Cept this time, the spec/class didn't make a bad name for it's self....

 

• Kyt

I would argue that these changes are pretty much the only way to make Hunters useful and productive again. After 3 years, rerolling next expansion is looking more and more promising.

[10:42] <BrTarolg> trying shahraz wearing lvl 60 blues would be like, fucking a hot girl but with aids and the wrong kind of condom on.

 

Furion

These suggestions would need a big overhaul of the hunter pet control and scaling systems as well... No way anyone in their right mind will have a pet tank anything big otherwise

It won't happen anytime soon but visions are what the hunter class needs.

 

Squishalius

I guess I'm a bit confused Kyt, you don't see the Hunter class as being useful and productive now? I mean I look at WWS reports and see Hunters doing great DPS, each spec bringing a unique buff, and situational trapping.

In smaller groups Hunters excel even more. Trap utility goes though the roof, pets can actually serve as very limited OTs, and of course the DPS. And honestly I don't think I need to even say it but soloing/grinding as a Hunter is only rivaled by a Rogue really.

The only major problem with Hunters as I see it is the Arena PvP issues that they face. However that is far and away what I think you were saying so again I'm confused as to why you think Hunters are in need of such a drastic overhaul?

 

Grogzor

Not true, they could easily provide hunters with more utility. Utility is pretty much the only thing that would ever hold a hunter back. The most important things we add are Misdirection and our Talent Tree Buffs.

It wouldn't be that hard for the developers to change some of our preexisting abilities to provide further use in raids.

I wonder what would happen if they put in multiple versions of steady shot that had different casting times, like 1.5/1.75/2.0/2.25 and their damage scaled correctly.

 

Osse

If hunters got same benefit from ench. shamans as rogues do the question would be.. why take rogues? :p

That is the biggest problem they get stuck with all the time I'd imagine.

 

Zurai

Source? The one time I saw Blues comment on Hunter role, we were primary DPS.

Me, for one. For as much as I joke about "Pet tank!" when people ask for tanks for instances, they would have to completely and totally redesign pets, the pet interface, and the BM talent tree in order to make pets truly viable main tanks. As for an entire tree devoted to pets OFFTANKING? That's a COMPLETE waste of a tree. If you devote 51 of your 71 talent points to tanking, you DAMN well better be able to main tank.

 

Jinsu

pets tanking...is that a joke? While I think we are pretty well off but still do have some concerns My pet being able to tank in a 25 man instance is not even close to being one of them...BUT I do think pets should be almost if not uncrittable or have a higher chance to avoid attacks to increase their survivability on mobs that hit harder.

 

ravendawn

Hey folks, new to your forums.

I just wanted to say i really enjoyed reading like 90% of this thread. Im an officer in my guild and while we will never have class leaders or what not, its always my choice and problem to deal with hunters and hunter apps. I cannot tell you how many i have had to coach when we were hurting for hunters. Now we are back to only having 2 (i think for since BC came out up until a month ago i was the only hunter in the guild). I wanted to add a few things to the thread.

1- While macros will bring your dps up, it will not maximize your damage. If i use one of the "all in one" macros my damage suffers. I would suggest running just a simple auto/steady and manually weaving other shots in when you can.

2- Pre Burning Crusade and a few patches ago, marks was easily the best raid spec. What a lot of hunters dont get is that around 65ish, marks stops performing as the other specs tend to really come to life. This isnt a specific level but something i have seen happen to myself and others. I recomend playing with new specs and giving them the gear they need to actualy perform.

3- This last one i know people will argue is bad info but i have always done it and dont have problems with dps unless im being lazy. If you need to fd drinking 1-2 tics wont hurt your dps on fights that are long enough to burn out your mana so long as your not fding to dump agro from pulling agro. Typically as i climb up on threat, lets say VR, i will pull pet back, fd and drink for 4-5 seconds or so then go back at it. I never run out of mana till the last few seconds if even then. Again, some might say this is bad advice but its something that ive always found helpful on longer fights.

Im not the best hunter and my advice is just as i see it. Love the thread and a lot of good info here. Thanks n later

 

ravendawn

Heh i was healing a pug on my alt druid... i had 3 huntards in my group and hadnt really seen one before... i got 3 in one group! It was horrible, i was chewing my nails off, then a miracle happened, i pul... a storm outside killed the power!

 

Opioid

Hunters CAN be very useful and productive now, but it requires a ton more focus and attention and better conditions than anyone else. The problem doesn't have to do with hunters mechanically, but in terms of "soft" concerns (hence the reason the thread was made)

 

Squishalius

Er, yes indeed Opioid. Go back and read the thread a bit more and you will understand the context of my reply that you quoted.

 

Lavode

Im spoiled rotten - The raid group has always had strong hunters since way back in molten core, which meant that the whole huntard thing has been.. confounding. Being in blackwing lair /aq 40 and reading patchwerk parses and realising that your hunters have higher dps than most hunters in naxx was entertaining as hell..
So, during our latest recruitment drive I was tanking lfg-heroic pugs, which usually works out quite well, and wound up with 2 hunters I didnt know, a mage from the raid, and a priest doing heroic shadow labyrinth. It goes a bit slowly, but I dont really notice too much, as shadow labyrint has rather draconian cc requirements. then we reach the warlock, and I explain the "nuke the boss" tactic.
first teleport....uh? why isnt he dead?
Second teleport. Ehh? its getting a bit hard to dodge the voidwalkers
Third teleport: Wipe
This repeats itself 3-4 times untill we finally get him down, mostly on the strength of cat gear tanking and the mage blowing every cooldown in the known universe, and we clear to murmur, brief on tactics and pull.

*ouch*
Three wipes later the priest has to go, we get in a paladin and prove that it is quite possible for a mage/bear/pally to 3 man heroic murmur if you dont mind having to expend evocate and innervate to do it.
So I armory them, and check the wws parse and hey, what do you know? they are both specced marks/surv.. Without having arena teams. (and the parse was fun too)
Needless to say, I didnt recruit those two >

Not too sure its a hunter thing tough, I have met some serious weirdness from every class in my lfg-heroic adventures. Also some really impressive excellence, which is why I do it.

 

majorerror

Well I don't think Marks/Surv should be a pretense for not recruiting hunters. If you have pre-tbc experience with everything including naxx, odds are that you've got the know-how to get the most out of a TBC Marks/Surv build (given it probably wont stand up to the BM dps).

This being said there's also alot of ignorance to be seen in the Marks/Surv fanboys. When BM came into the limelight as the most reliable/efficent/effective dps build, a few hunters I knew refused to adhere to the build. Maybe this is because they still felt the stigma of BM being the "Joke" dps build before TBC, maybe they didn't like the idea of having to micro-manage their pets, maybe they enjoyed PvP and the big crits too much, the list (probably) goes on. I've seen some awesome marks/surv hunters do very good damage when they weren't expected to.

But yes of course if you really wanted to do DPS and you knew how the class worked you'd probably be BM.

 

Longtooth

Ok guys, how are you ...

First of all i want to thank everyone for wasting 1 day of my life reading this forum while at work

If i remember the correct question in the begining is: Why so many "Just don't get it"

and in here within the discussion there are posts of Druids, Rogues, Warlocks and HUNTARDS that can not answer the question and are completely wasting time and etc.

The point of discussion is answered and stated several times and it is that of the complexity of the shot weaving + latency/fps factor.

Please let me rpesent myself at this point and put in a post in a long lost thread that gave me a bit of time to think about.

I wanted to be a hunter in every game that i try to play but never get the best of it since nobody can fix the class in order to keep the mob away of you and you being able to one shot kill is out of the question there for when i was wondenring about WoW and other games i decided that i will start WoW exactly becasue i thought that in this game a hunter will be possible to play

SO based on all the gaming experience in all games i expected to be some isues with this class also and as stated in some other Posts ... This Class is a Mess from the Begining
And basicly i have no idea how it can be fixed. Everyoen ehre is stating hwo this will fix and this but all those suggestions will overpower a class where the balance is needed and important

However in my point of vew the best way to fix all those shot rotation problems is to remove the 0.5s autocast end timer ... THink of it if they remove it even if you delay AC with a SS then before startign the enxt special or wahtever the AC will AUTOSHOT itself and thus there will be only a little less delay and we aer not goign to need to time thsoe shots that much ... adn in the end timing will still be importnat and will not remove the joy of complexity it has atm.

About being able to do all ther eis to be done in a raid to a hunter this is hearly impiossible atm for me ... i am one of those hunters that managed to enter MC a few times but enver actually made msyelf use the Aimed shot rotation and untill now i am still not using shot macros as it takes the fun ou tof me when i try to but after readin this entire thread i am still not thinking to use shot macros.

I am a MM hunter and i leveled this way and i am going to play this way up until all the other 2 BM hunters + 1 Survival in my raid start beating me in DMG .... atm on almost all raid bosses we represent the few Green bars on the top of the food chain and our casters are all geared up and with minor changes
Wo can not say our guild ahs much progress but it is because of the guild availability tiem to raid 2-3 hours a night at most and last night we killed Karatheras where Top 5 dmg where as folows Me, Rogue(my brother), BM, Surviva, BM ....

This was our 9-th overal attempt on the boss and we killed him with no looses or an use of Combat res so it sounds good to me ....
So basicly when you want to play the hunter you can perform pretty well even that SMALL mistakes are punished BIG TIME (btw the rogue was using Improved Hunters Mark + EhShamy + Survival hunter bonuses and pala buff to be able to reach our performance!!!)

As for all the NOT HUNTER people that poke their noses in here
Hey as a MM in order to not get agro capped i need to use 2xT4 for the set bonus because of all you winers that nerfed FD !!!! so i can relay on LOWER level of resists where my pet si actually doing not more than 20% of my total dmg and i can not use my trinkets up until 2-nd FD becasue i will over agro a realy well builded Prot Warrior if i burst in the begining

Actually last night i did concentrate too much on the shot rotation and was perfectly timing a Rapid Fire SS within Autoshots to not notice the agro of the hunter add in Karatherass Event ... good thing i pushed the button fast enought to so i can shut up the 3 laud voices in TeamSpeak that screamed at me


SO Hunters are good if you can play them other than that they are grinding BM machines with a BIG RED BUTTON of e-z mode kill a ganker or whatever i laught at all the BM noobs out there that try to kill me outside in the PvP realm but i know that i am no match for my Guildie BM Class Leader and Offices

So thou i am not skilled i tend to like the possibility of Hunters to be able to dominate in the out out world basicly over every other class but taht takes the skill to be able to kite and bleed off the enemy wich i don't believe is WHAT HUNTERS WHERE SUPOSED TO BE ....

isn't Hunter represent a guy that HUNTS ? ANy way as i sayd above even if it is so you cant over power a class so taht it can hunt everything


The main problem i see about my hunter and most probably the only one is that i can not figure out a set up that will be interested to 2v2 3v3 or 5v5 with me where i can prove them that hunter is needed for a top 2000+ rating team there for i am never going to wear the arena season 3 shoulders untill seasn 4 i guess ... since


maybe i am jsut a self educated noob that nees to educate more and being a top dps in raids is not enought but i can't think of another arena pvp set of me being different than Beast Master and hoping to be able to nuke someone in the 18 seconds of BWI

I get to get Sapped sheeped kited dead zoned hamstringed and all the cool things that help them beat me while i am looking around to heal a pet that does a minor dmg

FFS guys this is ahunter it is probably the most complicated Race in thsi Game and as i beleive in all games there are to be ....

OR maybe they remove the second hunetr bar and alow us to cast anything anywhere jsut based on casting time and shot rotations this would basicly fix the class big time !!!

 

Deathcabby

I don't understand what the point that you're trying to make is? The thread has been about why there seems to be a lack of well-played hunters versus other classes and the difficulties in recruiting hunters that understand their class.

 

Longtooth

"lack of well-played hunters"

This is not true!

This is a broken class from the begining of the game and as such has been fixed over and over again giving and taking buffing and nerfing and in the end along all those fixes there are exploits and i don't mean cheats just the inteligent player can search and find or discover for himself a ton a different ways to play this class excelent

and i tried to put that in an example ... last night we are an average guild that yesterday killed karathrerass for the first time and last night entering killing hydros, lurker, kartheras and disbanding resulted in me and 2 other hutners in the top 3 of the DMG meter then a Rogue at about 80% of our output and then the ehShamy ... warlocks at about 70~60% of our total dmg output and mages ~50-40%

That is what i have to say hunters being a hard race to raid with ... YES IT IS BUT IT IS WORTH THE EFFORD

The reason why so many don't get it is again in the Broken state of the CLASS and that along woth the fact it is the easiest possible way to play 1+pet vs the world and the best farmer ever ..... atm with Viper aspect i can kill a mob with average drop of 15 silver for it takes me 10 seconds to kill and loot .... not to mention motes, cloth and other valuable things this same mob drops

No other class can do that and that is also the reason why 90% of my guildie healers have a hunter wearing green/blue/epic gear and grinding with them (and the same reason why i am investing primals and other materials in crafting them epic chests, gloves, helms etc.

================
In the end i believe that the GAP between good and average hunters needs to be big so that the raid leaders will not just take ONE HUTNER BUT TAKE ONE REAL PLAYER !!!
========================

On second hand to make it a little bit more easier and still keep the complication i can only suggest a lowered cast time for a steady shot or a move from 0.5 to 0.1 EndCast time for the Autoshot in order to reduce cliping penalty due to lag/fps and all those speed buffs

And more over to all those that are searching for a good hunter giving the fact that itself some that pretend to be good do not calcualte crit rate as 1.3% extra dmg (with mortal shots but a 1.15% LoL what are you 5-th grade?

I don't want to be on the place of the raid leader or the GM of a guild that has a hutner that thinks Mortal Shots makes a Crit rate hit for 1.15% bonus ... this is a lame hunter with totally messed up Gear ....
=====================
Just for you as you probably know AP*Crit and i can not explain it perfectly en english but 5*5 is bigger than 4*6 or 3*7 where the sum is the same ... and in a hunter you have
AP*CRIT*HIT*WEAPON DMG*SPEED*ARMOR PENETRATION ... all thso edifferent aspects of a hunter multyply each other in a different way and make investing in only one of them a total waste where 2*2*2*2*2 is way more than 1*1*1*1*6 )) so to speak

a Mortal shots gives a bonus to Crit at a rate of 1.3 and the MasterMarksman gives AP a 1.1 rate to benefit from it where Lightning Reflexes give you a 1.15% pure power via agility and aBM gives you a 1.3 buff with the speed bonus

If i have managed to explain why investing of ALL hunter abilities rather than one is important then perhaps to those that still don't get will be completely clear why Speed bonuses give a lot more benefit to Marksmans and Survivalists and a lot less to BeastMasters

no tto speak how CRIT is calculated if you have the survivals Slaying and etc.

 

Valaranin

I spent four months as the optimum Beast Mastery raiding build and while it's effect, it is also boring as hell to play. That alone is why I respecc'd back to Marksman, while 7/45/9 is nowhere near as effective or efficent(something I have no illusions about), the extra challenge of getting the most out of this build is fun for me.

 

dukes

The gap between a good hunter and a bad hunter is from 400 DPS to 1600 DPS. That kind of gap is just ridiculous. The entire mechanic behind "shot spam = bad for DPS" goes against the grain of how to play virtually every other class out there. Sure, the gap between a good rogue and one who doesn't use SND but just uses SS and evis is quite noticable, but it isn't four times the DPS.

There are too many hunters who don't realise this, and don't know that timing is the big thing (i.e. autoshot requires 0.5 seconds end time to cast, which means spamming = no autoshots as well as specials = bad). That's the point of this thread - the entire hunter mechanic is so entirely different from everything else in this game, but not only that, it isn't documented anywhere in the main system. It's like having a fast, high DPS offhand for a shaman actually lowers DPS when using WF/WF in comparison to having a green, low DPS but slow offhand. It's counter-intuitive to the game in general, and yet isn't documented anywhere in the game itself so anyone who doesn't know about is likely to get the wrong idea.

That's just asking for an infraction, tbfh. I'm also not sure why you decided to post in a thread that's a month old.

 

Valaranin

I agree that the counter intuitive mechanics of hunter hurt the average player. Blizz never provide information they feel will overwhelm the average casual player, this was mentioned by a GM during a mage discussion on the damage coeffiecent nerf of the Imp Fireball/Frostbolt spells and hunter mechanics are slightly more technical than spell coefficents. With this in mind the situation will never really change the only real recourse is to find players who want to learn and teach them or hope some of your current raiders reroll hunter.

And the idea of overhauling our class again is slightly silly, changing our mechanics yet again won't necessarily make tham more accesable to the average joe huntard.

in summary knowledge is power empower your fellows and you may see that huntard become a respectable hunter.

 

chadcook1999

Yes the old cliche of hunter is easy to learn and hard to master comes to mind. You think with FD playing a hunter would be EZ mode DPS and valuable asset instead of the liability they seem to be at times. I heard that some guilds even have workshops and teach them how to trap, dps and play class, maybe other hunters need to start more of those to help their rep before ppl's minds will change.

 

Elvandir

A badly played hunter is no more of a liability than a badly played *any other class*. The "ZOMG HUNTARD" demented braying from the peanut gallery has mostly stopped and is confined to the official forums.

By the time you get to 70, your reputation will be built on your own personal performance, rather than the perception of a class as a whole, regardless of the character you play, be it Hunter, Priest, Druid or Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In anycase, this thread is not to repeat over and over the "FD makes for ezmoad dps lol" idea, rather, it is to try and understand why there is such a vast discrepancy in the fundamental understanding of the class between players, and the adverse effects is has on their playstyle, and general enjoyment.

Personally I think it is because there is so much information that is either hidden, or not readily observable, the 0.5 "cast" on Auto-Shot is a prime example, in no other situation in the game, can your DPS be *lowered* by using an ability, it may not be optimal, but it will never drop below a certain baseline (Slam excepted). The whole idea of weaving shots was cool and funky, but it was a direct result of terrible planning. By giving a class that relies on auto attacks (same as a Rogue/Warrior) precisly two damaging specials, people were forced to find a way to massage the mechanics to the best effect, by a combination of arcane knowledge, number crunching and an ungodly amout of testing.

I like the class, but I think the shot weaving mechanic is retarded.

 

Bop

The shot rotation mechanic is also dependant on outside influences that can be out of your control, such as high latency from a bad router or the FPS problems thats effecting alot of people.

It hampers all classes abilities but, hunters are hit pretty hard I feel when you are constantly clipping and clubbing shots due to the timing randomly changing as you get a lag spike or something happening onscreen which causes you to lose a chunk of FPS. If a warrior or rogue misses using an ability by a fiew seconds, it's a temporary DPS loss, if a hunter delays using an ability, it's going to cause a DPS loss over a longer period because the rotation has to be restarted.

The CC ability of the class is also judgement based when your doing it in combat due to the mechanics of traps, and you only get 1 shot at trapping a mob in a heroic or raid environment because if it fails or gets broken, it's fairly annoyed and wants your blood, and has no problems plowing through mail armor while your traps are cooling.

 

Elvandir

Not so much, it is possible to fire a chain of steadies without ever seeing an auto.

 

Cranch

Well, you might want to talk to a very good warrior sometime and ask him just what he has to do to tank... count your blessings!

I like the fact that I have to jump through hoops to maximize my damage; that keeps up my interest in the game. My kid plays a hunter too, and according to Cheeky's spreadsheet, I should outdamage her by 40 dps. But she consistently outdamages me, and that's great! It means I still have more to learn.