Our hunters like Sorren's Hunter Timer because it helps them figure out their shot rotations. Your hunters may want to look into it.

Our guild's just been really lucky with app hunters. For example, all of our hunters were MM and scoffed at SV. Then we had a SV hunter come in and get top 3 in DPS (all of our hunters were in around 10-12th place). Later on, we decided to have one of the hunters go BM, but it wasn't until we had an app hunter come in and outdps him that the hunters figured out how to not suck at BM.

It seems to me that it's much harder to play a hunter post-TBC than pre-TBC (I have a hunter alt that fool around with sometimes). As was mentioned, clipping is a huge issue in the loss of hunter DPS, and not enough hunters pay enough attention to it. Unless they see results, they don't realize just how much of a problem clipping is.

One thing I've done to try and help our hunters, aside from getting them timer mods and recruiting new hunters, is look at WWS. I'll find a guild at a comparable level to us, look at their hunters and compare their performance to ours. And if some other hunter significantly outdpses ours, I can tell the hunters to look at the WWS log to see what to tweak.

I have to say this thread has evolved pretty damn well.

(This is a shameless, disguised bump that may or may not earn the ire of the red hammer of doom.)

Hunters are only class that need to time all specials, slam warriors are closest but nothing like that (its not on every swing + swings are slower).

If you would unchain auto from specials and biggest problem with hunter "accessibility" will be fixed. Without auto-chain there is still enough to do to show skill: keeping HM up, MD in fight if needed, pet micro and still some rotation (damage wise arcane9 > multi6 > steady for all builds so simple steady spam won't make you uber player, plus mana rotation [multi1 + steady] etc.).

I wonder if this will change with the fix they said they were implementing for casters so they won't have to use the \stopcasting macro. I thought I read somewhere that they were decoupling the server and client so you could send the next action at the right time according to the client, but just resolve later because of the lag. (Was this ever confirmed?)

This would seem to alleviate problems due to lag, yes? Still doesn't help that (according to what everyone is saying) you still would need to do the weaving. I'm not sure how much I'm gonna like doing this when I get to higher levels with my hunter.

I think you overstate the case. I will say that theoretically, at least, Hunters are well balanced right now in terms of Total Information Awareness, or the numbers of things in an encounter you have to keep in mind.

Looking at some of the other DPS classes, we can see mage, who has to keep track of aggro, but has a few good tricks for reducing/dropping it. They still have to maintain a (rough) rotation to maximize DPS, to make their TIA fair. If you look at a warlock, they have no set "MAX DPS" rotation to speak of (other than keeping everything up) but they have to worry about aggro in a way that almost anyone else doesn't have to fret as intensely about... they have improved imp, and a 5 minute cooldown half-aggro loss for a soul shard. They pay the price for having EZ-mode spell casting, and it comes out right.

The problem is that the game is not well setup for the classes at this moment. Hunters are supposed to be safe DPS, which frees them almost entirely from the aggro-watching game, and they wear mail, which means they can take a fuckup hit easier than a lock or a mage can. In theory, the required focus and output to play the classes is pretty much equal, just loaded in different places (with Hunters advantages meaning its all front-loaded to them in the cast rotation.)

The problem is that the TBC raid game is stacked with encounters that make the stated role of "safe DPS" almost meaningless, or a hindrance, and make hunters suffer as a result. When you have sooo many encounters on enrage timers, requiring all out Zerging the DPS, Hunters are reduced to "another ranged DPS class" that fails to take into account their *main gimmick* and makes them an inferior choice to almost any other DPS (along with requiring shadow priest synergy for a mid-range hunter in terms of WoW talent to maintain output.)

If things were revised away from everything having the same extreme DPS need and other ways of making encounters difficult implemented, and they made a role for physical ranged DPS being important other than the one or two bones they've thrown (Mother Sharaz) I do not think the concentration requiring to play a hunter and make it valuable is radically overtuned compared to anything else; its just differently allocated.

Hunter shot rotations have just been complicated by steady shot. IIRC it used to be aimed shot/auto/multi/auto/auto/aimed shot/auto/auto/multi.

The margin for error has become so much larger now that we have to account for a less-than-three second cast time.

I almost miss hunter mechanics pre-BC. Especially traps. Granted, it takes a little more being-on-your-A-game now than it did before, but I still desperately miss the "I can CC three people at the same time with two traps and a scatter" while defending the flag in AB.

I've tried all three, and the only one I've really been happy with is Quartz so far.

Zhunter is horrible.

All very valid points. You're also very correct in that I'm (intentionally) overstating the class. I'm trying to drive home the point that Hunters are basically the most complex DPS class/spec in the game right now. (Most people are not willing to accept this.)

A lot of what you're saying is quite correct, however. We don't survive well in an environment where threat isn't a huge concern. We don't survive well in an environment where it's an all-out burnfest. We're supposedly "low-maintenance" and "sustained, steady DPS", but the former is completely untrue (we require Grace of Air, which may not always be available, and a Shadow priest to perform optimally, as you noted, amongst other situational things like being able to stand still most of the fight, etc.), and the latter is generally not something that people look for anymore because so many of the raid fights in the game are BURNBURNBURNBURNBURNBURN.

A lot of what's being said in this thread is separate from raid design issues, and raid synergy, though. As I mentioned, I believe the basic mechanics of the class to be inherently flawed. Essentially, in my opinion, Blizzard needs to just do an overhaul of the basic fundamentals of the shot mechanics, because as they operate right now they simply do nothing except punish the player simply for being human and for having sub-optimal connectivity/performance concerns which may or may not be entirely out of his/her control.

The raid situation right now is not fantastic, and Mother Shahraz is awful for completely different reasons (it's just a badly designed fight right now), but what Blizzard really needs to realize is that we're not working in, and are not really valued for, the role they set out for us to fill. Other classes generally ARE, but we are not. In my opinion, Blizzard has to adapt the class to the reality of the raid game as it stands right now, not the other way around. Admittedly, either of those would require a pretty big shift, which may or may not sit well with the class and overall player populace.

I'm getting kind of anxious to see what they'll do with the supposed "many changes" in 2.3. I suspect they'll be largely PvP things aimed at Hunters in Arenas, but I'm hoping they'll throw the raiding Hunters a bone somehow. Who knows?

(I also don't want it to seem like I'm disagreeing with you completely, that was a very good post and I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I just wanted to offer my two cents. )

When I started playing this game, that was one of the first things I heard.

sorry, double post

Is this why all arrogant posters are protection warriors ?

I don't think Blizzard intentionally made the hunter the way it is now in BC. They just took away aimed shot weaving, saw that it obviously didn't work, and gave back something to weave in between autoshots. Last week I first took my hunter alt to Karazhan and it was an interesting experience to see how many mechanics there are that just make hunters lose loads of dps by making a small mistake. I found this to be a very frustrating experience when compared to playing a caster or melee class. Not only do you have to use the steady shot stuff correctly, but positioning, pet control, aggro control, mana control... it was all a bit overwhelming in how much it differs from just grinding or doing a 5 man where most of it isn't that important.
At some point I just gave up and let my pet die.

This isn't a new problem by any means. The only difference is that the problem has been expounded upon in TBC. One of the main reasons I rerolled for TBC from hunter was that none of our core problems from classic felt fixed.

Beside the obvious lack of knowledge that is usually visible when hunters "underperform" I have also met a lot of hunters who simply dont want to learn.
Why cant I just play the game and have fun, and then when they are utterly ruined on DPS meters they want to learn but I still have to see one with that initial mindset become anywhere close to good...

I dont really mind having to do so much theorycraft to perform well, but when I have bad lag I simply hate to play because my performance drops so incredibly much. I normally have ~100ms but the other day I had +500ms and my DPS on Gruul dropped by more than 200 and that is something Blizz really should work out.

Firstly, great thread, found it excessively helpful.

Having come back after 18 months off I noticed my dps wasn't scaling the way I'd expect, not having even seen steady shot until now I was still trying to use the old 10 sec shot rotation which, to be frank, decimated any other class. More than anything the way in which our class mechanics have been not just altered, but completely rewritten in order be played effectively demonstrates how flawed the hunter design is. I've played a lock, and while its necessary to at least know what order to use your spells in, the shear complexity needed to just not cripple your dps as a hunter is insane. More than anything that's why I'm giving up on raiding in BC and sticking to pvp.

As before, thanks for the effort in aiding the hunter community, but I think those that need the help the most aren't the ones that will read this.

I agree that having the strict timing issues involved--most of which -require- a mod of some sort--is somewhat on the unfair side of things from an optimal standpoint. We have some really good Hunters in our guild, and I can always rely on them for solid DPS... however they watch their shot timers like a hawk and handle things appropriately. I can see how it's frustrating to them to have to put in so much energy, when a Mage can just watch the red bar on Quartz and hit Fireball every ~3 seconds while watching a Scorch timer.

That said, there are some hidden tradeoffs here aren't there? Certainly, for the sake of argument, a Hunter is one of the best classes when playing horribly isn't it? I look at the WWS parses from our BM Hunters and figure they would be doing around 850-875 DPS just by sticking their pet on a boss and auto-shooting.

Certainly, it says a lot how much effort a Hunter has to go through to get that last 200 DPS, but 875 DPS is sure a lot better than anyone else could do while mostly AFK, isn't it? At least at the gear levels being compared, that is.

Also, as unfair as it is to raiders, Hunters are still basically a "solo-friendly pet class" that is silly good at easy grinding and general lax play. I suppose to some extent, Blizzard must have decided to make the high-end amazingly micro-oriented as some sort of tradeoff for these various points? Who knows really. (Incidentally, this is probably why so many Hunters "don't get it"--they rolled a solo-friendly pet class, not an amazingly micro-oriented timing fest in many cases!)

That said, really good Hunters are quite good in every WWS I have ever seen with them... they have a tendancy to make the whining "I can't handle it" Hunters look really bad, and the rest of us scratch our heads saying "wtf are you whining about Hunter DPS for?!"--of course, most of us don't understand all the work that may go into it, but at the end of the day people tend to just look at damage meters.

I do think Blizzard should revamp shot rotations/timing a bit, just as they are promising to make casting client-side to avoid the use of stopcasting macros. No class should be -required- to use a mod in order to maintain mostly optimal DPS.

Also, as a note to any other raid leader reading, if you DO find a Hunter that knows how to Theorycraft, do shot rotations, and generally kick ass.. do NOT let them escape. =P

I think it's great that hunters have become a more dynamic, skill-based class to play. And I think it's great that they fixed us as far as DPS is concerned since the Naxx days, when the entire HUNTER CLASS could quit a guild without hurting a guild's progression. For as much as one can bitch about hunter viability in raids, it's a drastic improvement from pre-TBC, and I just don't see hunters crying enough about raid DPS post TBC for it to be something Blizzard pays close attention to.

We're not a burst DPS class. More to the point, we were not designed as a burst DPS class, and unless fights take longer or they roll aimed shot somewhere halfway between its pre-TBC to post-TBC viability, we're going to suffer in the OMG burnemdown fights, while still holding our own in overall DPS meters. We're not as useless as we USED to be, and to a lot of hunters that's good enough. A bigger problem I see is the point blank refusal for most hunters to accept that BM spec is no longer useless. But you can't force smart into people, and it's pointless to try. h

We're suffering primarily in pvp, which is funny, considering what Blizzard originally intended for our class. But as I've said that before, I'm not going to belabor the point. I just can't see any drastic changes that can be made to the hunter class as far as raiding goes that won't break us as far as the balance between pve and pvp goes. I'd like to see changes that most classes can accept as at least reasonably balanced-- if I remember correctly, the primary reason arcane shot was nurfed was because it was "OP" in beta-- an opinion that is rendered mostly moot once resilience in pvp is taken into account.

We just don't have a lot of utility-- a lot of classes in the game can complain about a particular spec lacking utility, but how many classes can say that their whole class lacks utility compared to most other classes in the game for both pvp and pve?

It's a sad state of affairs and I just don't see it being fixed as far as pve is concerned. I think hunters as a class are designed for pvp, and to that extent should have the pvp utility of warlocks and druids. I just don't think Blizzard agrees.

That and the whole "90% of hunter dmg is physical and therefore does not ignore armor." But I see what you're getting at.

I dont mean to come off as bashing hunters, but there are somethings I have always not quite gotten about them. I'm painting them pretty broadly, but in general, at least in my limited experience, alot of them have little to no concept of what aggro is or how it works. Having played a rogue for over 2 years now, I'd say that the concept of aggro and how it works is vital to doing what I do best in raids. But in my limited experiences, hunters in general dont seem to understand it very well. For example, the large majority of the ones I have dealt with ( in a raid environment) use Feign Death as an "oh shit I pulled aggro!" button. They dont use it pre-emptively to clear thier aggro. I learned early on that a well timed vanish can allow me to basically go nuts afterwards. If I waited to do that until I actually had aggro, the results would be disastrous.

Now I realize that the mechanics are slightly different ( Feign Death can be resisted) but I always felt like it was an excuse. Perhaps I am being too harsh, or perhaps I have dealt with some terrible hunters, but having a full aggro clear every 30 seconds, , even one that can be resisted, would ( to me) mean that hunters are the absolute BEST class at managing aggro. But it seems they often are not. But this is just one persons point of view, I am sure there are other perspectives.

What you have to understand is that we have NO other way of shedding aggro, or reducing it either through skills, "skill" or talents. Comparatively to other DPS-classes, I found we generate a hell of a lot more aggro and I can see why someone less informed, without a good working threat-meter, would not use Feign Death until a mob would turn around and start running for them.

We've got some bitchin' tanks in my guild, but even I can out-aggro them if I go balls-out on bosses, feign once, and continue without using another feign, to compare it to using a 5 minute cooldown like Vanish. I believe rogues automatically already have a -30% threat modifier to their class, I'm pretty sure Hunters have nothing like this.


Personally, I rolled a hunter coming from playing a warrior for nearly 2 years because I'd get a lot less time available for playing the game due to the new job I got (and still maintain now) and I figured I'd best roll something that could still solo, wasn't required in raids (I held a 90+% attendance with my other job and warrior) but was still useful enough to be slotted in. The only problem was we didn't really have any old-school Hunters with us (all three of us in the guild are Belves, I suppose that says enough) so I've just been absorbing the scraps of information I find here and other sources to improve myself, but I still feel we miss a real hunter pro to give us the wax on, wax off routine

That said, I like the class, but I don't think I love it enough to pass up on the opportunity of rolling a Death Knight come expansion. I've only rerolled from my warrior because I couldn't be a reliable tank with my schedule, and the need for DPS warriors seemed to drop off very suddenly and just from the basic description of the DK it sounds like a good match to me.

I'm still avidly playing, using the macros, tips, rotations and I'm very much looking forward to those announced changes for 2.3 but for now, I think I just don't get being a Hunter very much. That is a shame, because they could do a whole lot more with the class.

Would it have a noticable impact on dps (upwards) for the really good hunters to allow auto shot to fire through steady shot casting and remove it's hidden casting time? Would anything need to be adjusted/nerfed if this was changed (which might not be welcome in general)?

I only play a hunter as a twink for some heroics and Karazhan, but I definitely know that I have a way to go yet to do really good dps (for my gear level). I basically just do steady shot between autos, making sure the autoshot actually fires before I hammer the button. And then try to jam in arcane and kill command when possible.

I don't really see why hunter mechanics have to be this complicated - even if the hunter class might be easier and more forgiving in general - and it feels like a left-over from the designers wanting a different system for hunters.

They would have to find some other way to keep autoshot from being able to be fired on the run. Blizzard currently uses a .5 sec cast time to prevent something from being instant.

It would be awesome if hunters could autoshoot on the run, but people would say "ZOMG BRAEKIN TEH PVPZ BLIZZ EVEL"

The same could be said of rogues, and they're easily top DPS in T6 dungeons (Serrated Blades and the ignore armor stat notwithstanding).

If hunter DPS were a concern armor issues might be a culprit, but based off the WWS I've seen, Hunters can compete all the way through BT and Hyjal. Even right now with my hunter only sporting a few Kara epics and in the dregs of TBC content I'm pretty happy with where I stand DPSwise. My only source of frustration is seeing other classes get to be responsible for some source of CC in raids while our traps are less reliable and just generally ignored (require more attention, cooldowns preventing re-application on a break or resist, difficult to apply on ranged attackers).