Avellyr

With the release of Naxxramas, I've noticed that hunters aren't nearly as useful as they once were. Other classes are slowly filling in our role, or simply surpassing us in their general contribution to the raid. I feel like the major issues are that the devs don't have a clear vision for what a hunter is supposed to do, and that a lot of the things that define our class aren't in high demand in a raiding scenario. I made a post similar to this on the WoW hunter boards, but the feedback i got was less than intelligent, so I thought I would post it here, where people know what they're talking about.

So lets take a look at what hunters can do for a raid.

DPS
A good hunter's DPS is typically not as good as a rogue, mage, or warlock's. The hunter's advantage has traditionally been that we require little maintenance and don't pull threat. This is no longer true. Mages have almost 0 chance to pull threat with a good tank and their new talents. Rogues can keep their threat in check and still destroy a hunter's damage output. Warlocks require healing to keep their lifetapping going, but with a good tank, they can also do amazing damage without pulling hate on most encounters in Naxx.

There are two major things that hurt our ability to do dps:

Scalability
The largest problem with hunters is the mechanic behind our staple damage attack, Aimed Shot. The issue here is that in order to do the most DPS possible, we need to consistently use aimed shot. This effectively limits our "white dps" time to the time between aimed shots, 6 seconds. Oddly enough, this made Ashjre'thul, Crossbow of Smiting from Chromaggus the best hunter weapon for a long time, because after haste, it has a speed of 2.9, exactly enough to fit two shots in between aimed shots. Any weapon faster than Ashjre'thul will still get the same number of shots in that 6 second window, unless it's a lot faster.

This means that all of the "upgrades" blizzard has been giving us are, in fact, trash. The only weapon so far to actually have a high enough damage range to outstrip our blackwing lair crossbow is the Nerubian Slavemaker, a weapon from Kel'thuzad, and then just barely.

Buffs
Hunters simply lack the ability to go "all-out". The only consumables that increase a hunter's dps are elixir of the mongoose, grilled squid, and ground scorpok assay. We can't use sharpening stones, winterfall firewater, elixir of giants, battle shout, elixir of x power, Flask of supreme power, wizard oil, etc.

This is fine though, hunters shouldn't necessarily be doing more damage than their squishier counterparts. So there's got to be a reason besides dps that you would bring hunters to your raid, right?

Raid Utility
So what do hunters bring to the table besides dps?

Pulling
Pulling is an essential function in any raid. Often, it's easier for the tank to pull, and when you do need a hunter pull, it usually only takes one hunter. Peeling off large pulls is nice, but typically unnecessary or performable by another class.

Kiting
This is useful on a handful of encounters (Razorgore, Gluth), however our ability to kite more than one target is severely limited. Mages on the other hand, could theoretically kite an infinite number of mobs.

Crowd Control
Freezing traps and Frost traps are useful in certain situations, but usually not as useful as shackle or polymorph. Trying to place them in combat is iffy at best, making them an unreliable means of CC. We have no reliable stuns without speccing deep in Beast Mastery.

So what do hunters get?

Mail Armor
We're "low maintenance dps" right? So why do we need to have high physical damage mitigation? It's nice for PvP, soloing, and small instances, but in a raid it's about as useful as nipples on a breasplate.

Tracking
Not so useful after your raid has been through an instance more than once

Pets
Useable in raids sometimes. They contribute a negligible amount of dps, and if you're fighting anything with an AoE, forget it.

Stings
Serpent Sting is a waste of a debuff slot and a bigger waste of mana in any fight where you could conceivably run out. Viper sting is useful on one type of trash pull in all the raid instances. Scorpid Sting isn't even useable on anything that will outlive its duration.

Hunter's Mark
Was useful for assigning targets until the advent of lucky charms.

Aspects
Wild is useful on two fights (three if you do Kri last). Pack is useful on Anub'rekhan, otherwise it's a novelty.

Tranqulizing Shot
Basically a gimmick to give raids an excuse to take hunters. Used on 5 encounters.

Trueshot Aura
Only available in a marksman spec. Given a choice, rogues will choose battle shout over this. Still, it's one of the most useful things we can contribute.

So if you want DPS, you bring a rogue or a mage. When do you bring a hunter? I'm not about to suggest that hunters will start to be left out of guild runs, but we're simply not contributing as much as other classes, and it bothers me. Something desperately needs to be done to make hunters more useful.

This is all purely my opinion, and I understand a lot of you might not be that sympathetic considering the state of shamans in PvE, but I'd like to get some feedback. Am I overreacting here, or am I pretty spot-on?

 

Kasi

I think you're overreacting in parts. And stretching the truth in others. Some others I think you're spot on though.

DPS - No not as good as a rogue or mage. Warlock? Yes. Look at patchwerk dmg meters, which is basically a dps test on an unmoving target. Hunters generally slide in there behind the mages, rogues and dps warriors, but above locks. Honestly I think thats where they should be in an encounter like that. There are other fights like Ouro, Gluth, etc where hunters nearly top the dmg charts. If hunters could match mages and especially rogues in a fight like that, there would be no need to bring those classes. Mages and rogues both give up more (survivibility mainly) compared to hunters for their dps. Hence I feel fine with where hunters are. You do have the advantage of the most agro control. Yes mage control is much better, but due to new 1.12 multiplicative changes, mages will be doing more agro on both sides of the fence.

Scalability - I agree hunters are too tied to the speed of the their main weapon. The class also suffers from getting their epic quest, which was insanely good for that time, leaving them with little upgrades after (other than the Chromag xbow.

Buffs - Well they don't have a flask. Honestly I don't think you want one. It will just be one more thing you'd have to farm.

Pulling - Agree, only one is needed.

Kiting - Mages can kite multiple adds in 40 man raids? Umm, well unless Naxx suddenly changed things to make trash mobs frost novable, I don't think so. Hunters can kite mobs, especially with the fact they can FD if the mob catches up. Of course that can be resisted and such.

CC - Mages polymorph isn't exactly terribly useful. Since there is basically one fight (Domo) where it is needed. The rest of the time it is only used to cc your own people if they're MC'd. Still, CC is notoriously finicky in 40 mans. Most mobs are just immune to stuff. That hurts your class as well as many others.

Mail Armor - Seriously, having ~4000 armor (or more, used Steelfleece's gear) is nothing? As well hunters having pretty good stamina on most their gear? They are quite a durable class. Add in that survivalist builds (or heck even the 5/31/15 who have deterrance) aren't able to do some temporary offtanking? Sure you shouldn't be pulling agro, but hunters have great survibility.

Pets - Yes, both classes who use pets need to have them be designed to use more in a raid environment. Right now the best thing is just park a wolf and have it howl.

Mark - One would think the mark would be useful for hunter AP on the target.

Auras/Trueshot - Both useful, sometimes very much so (hunter NR for alliance hunters). Sure sometimes not that great, but definately useful.

Tranq Shot - I agree it is a gimmick, but at that time hunters were broken and no one brought them. This was introduced to bring them back into the game.

Seriously though, you're not going to get huge dps upgrades. That would severely imbalance pvp, where hunters are one of the best classes due to high range dmg, pets and survivibility. Hunters are great low maintenance, agro free, non squishy ranged dps. On alliance side with BOW they basically have no downside since alliance mana regen makes hunters extremely efficient. If you did up hunter dps to match mages and rogues (they already are even if not better than locks), you would never bring the first three like you're concerned about with hunters. Hunters have a lot of pros. Making them the best dmg dealers on top of those pros would be massively unbalanced.

Honestly I just think you're overreacting. Back in MC hunters were tops of the dmg meters on most fights. I know they were with my guild. Similarily with BWL. Due to upgrades other classes have gotten since (mages, rogues) as well as the fact that hunter's gear was frontloaded, the other classes have caught up and passed hunters. And yeah due to their many strengths hunters have, I have no problem with that.

 

McInaction

Mana inefficency is currently limiting hunter dps output. Once that block is cleared it will be the fact that our entire dps comes from multishot aimshot and autoshots.

 

Avellyr

I agree that hunters shouldn't get a huge damage buff, we're more of a moderate dps+utility class, except without the utility. Out of the three things you listed, our pets and our survivability don't mean so much in a controlled raid situation.

 

Kasi

Really? From what the hunters have said on the sustained dps thread, it seems like even the horde hunters with proper consumable use aren't running out of mana on Patchwerk fights. I'd imagine alliance hunters have even less problems, especially if JOW is up a decent amount of time. Still I don't think hunter dps is all that lacking. Patchwerk, a fight that really isn't suited to their strengths have had hunters placing in the top 10. IIRC Elendril was top 4 on one of his guild's kills. So was another hunter.

Edit: I agree pets aren't huge. There was an interesting post on here a couple days ago that went into the boss fights in Naxx a pet is useful on, given the Cryptstalker bonus. I wish I knew which thread it was in, but it was about a 50/50 if the pet was useful to take out or not. As for survivibilty, I'd disagree. Much more environmental dmg, multiple mobs to deal with and so on that make having good armor and health quite useful. Even if its not always apparent.

After looking at that sustained thread, I've come to the conclusion I think that hunters and warlocks abilities in dmg dealing are very much lying in the margins. It really seems to be about shaving those fractions of seconds off rotations, or optimizing lock builds for dps. It seems some locks and hunters can do very strong dmg on the Patchwerk fight, but some lag a lot behind. For example mages seem to just go the 17/31/3 or 20/0/31 build and just spam their major spells. Only thing that's going to hold them back from other mages is inferior gear and/or connection.

 

Avellyr

I can't really think of a fight better-suited to a hunter's DPS. We get to shoot at a mob that's sitting in one place for 7 minutes, I don't see how that's bad for a hunter. The fights where hunters place high on the damage meters are fights where, for whatever reason, either the rogues or the mages are busy doing something else. Even with this, you should never see a hunter as #1 in a good guild. But you're right, dps isn't the issue, utility is.

 

McInaction

That's because horde hunters de-rank multi and aimed, sacrificing damage to increase endurance.

 

Kasi

Well sure it's well suited for a hunter's dps. But it is perfectly ideal for all classes dps, especially ones that normally do have a lot more restrictions. Especially the melee. There is no cleaves, no random aoe effects or knockbacks, no placement issues, resist gear to wear and no agro concerns (well within reason, I have heard of agro being pulled but not sure how). Caster are pretty ideal too being casting on a stationary target without much element resists. Sure for a hunter they like all the above, but they're never going to be bothered by cleaves, aoe, knockbacks (well other than Rag) or most of that stuff. If a hunter could match (or especially beat) melee dps and mage dps on such a target than hunters would be overpowered.

I still don't understand the problem though. Strong ranged dps, strong pvp power, good survivibility, pets, one of the best soloers in the game, useful auras, tranq (even if gimmicky), being the main pullers, CC, kiting power. That's not enough? What kind of increased utility are you looking for? And please no more debuffs on the mobs. 16 as it is is enough of a hassle to divy up.

 

Tzeni

Twin emps are better... hunters can move and dps better than melee.

 

Avellyr

I'm not disputing our performance in other areas of the game, such as PvP, soloing, and small instances. In fact, I would say that hunters were designed for these, and not for raiding. Auras and tranq are very situational, only one hunter is needed to be main puller, pets have serious problems, and any situation that requires CC and kiting, another class can do better. I'm talking purely from the perspective of a raid leader that would want to maximize the efficiency of his/her raid, would they bring a hunter, or would another class serve equally well or better?

 

Kasi

I don't know McInaction. I just went and looked at the sustained dps thread. Quite a bit on hunter's performance on Patch in there. Nothing that suggested they were using anything else than highest ranked shots all the time, even on horde hunters.

Edit: I dunno. As a raid leader I always had 5. Well occasionally 4 if someone couldn't show up. You'd have to ask Praetor. He could give a far more accurate account of the strengths/weaknesses of hunters than I could with my more limited experience.

 

Groglox

If I was using max consumables with a shaman in my group I can still go oom. It is just ussually for a short amount of time. Most of the time I stock up on lesser mana oils and greater mana potions and go through those. They are both cheap but still effective.

As for the hunter class itself. I would adore it if the hunter beast mastery tree was half as interesting as the warlock demonology tree. I would love for some of the horrible Marks talents to be cleaned up, and for some more utility to come out of our class. I frequently find myself making up my own utility for the class by tanking for fun in mc.

I like playing a hunter, but it just feels REALLY one demensional.

 

Umph

Ugh, no, it's not an over-reaction. Hunter damage frontloaded? What on earth are you talking about; they have damage cycles like any other class that depend entirely upon a meagre mana pool (you're lucky if you get an AI and a Spirit) with shitty mana regen and limited consumables whilst other mana using classes have lifetap and evoc/managems. Oh, and as an additional kick in the pants Hunter mana regen stops entirely whilst casting aimed shot, because apparently it's a spell (that takes casting time interruptions!) I know, i'll send my pet in for a bit of extra damage! Let's take AQ40 as an example; I can do that on.. oh.. Fankriss - other encounters he gets mashed in short order or can even fuck up the fight entirely (twin emps.) Hell most of the trash kills it too!

But what am I saying, I'm a Horde Hunter, I don't have luxuries like Judgement/Blessing of Wisdom or Kings to augment my horrible regeneration. Instead I go through up to 15 mana pots and countless mageblood/lesser mana oil to even be able to slightly keep up with the other DPS classes. DPS/Utility class? No, I'm becoming a sub-standard DPS class on raids who just happens to have a lovely gimmick (tranq) to ensure at least 4 of us get a slot in raids for tranq rotations. But you can feign! Who cares? Mages can continually DPS and produce better results whilst arguably bringing BETTER utility (water, ai) to a raid. All I can do is replace a Shaman if times are hard (for Aspect of the Wild) or give other melee classes 100ap each at the probable cost of GoA and my own DPS.

Allow my mana regeneration to continue whilst casting aimed shot (shitty as it is), give me a stacking RAP buff similar to the one frost mages have and that would be a start.

I'm annoyed :(.

Edit: Patchwork is ONE fight.

 

Avellyr

One thing that I think would help would be to give pets the same targeting restrictions as totems. This would ensure that they don't get squashed flat in PvE encounters, and it wouldn't be that overpowered in PvP, since people usually don't try to AoE my pet to death, they either target him, or they target me. Being able to use our pets would only be a small step however, since it would basically amount to a minor dps increase in raids, and it wouldn't really bring any utility to the class.

 

Farstrider

That's kind of the problem. I do love it but I find myself playing my druid more and more because it seems like I actually can make more of a marginal difference there.

Hunter is very mindless after a long time of play. No burst dps to pick and choose when to use, virtually no cooldowns to speak of to manage.

I'd love to see Rapid Shots on a longer cooldown, but increase fire rate by more. So we could actually do some insane burst dps, maybe once every 10 minutes or something. Or a killer version of aimed shot (Let's face it, it would have to be called "Boom! Headshot") on a 2minute cooldown. I'd be happy to give up something in return to actually have to think a little about when I pop my cooldown abilities.

Re the weapon speed issue it definitely needs sorting. There are a few ways to do it, but to be honest the option that would actually differentiate one hunter from another would be to un-normalise everything, and then set aimed shot speed to 2xweapon speed. Then every hunter can have a different rotation set up, but their individual weapon speed becomes far less important - you'd actually see AQ40 weapons outperform the BWL Xbow.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

Corkscrew

Hunters not useful? Someone has to have the easy call on Nefarian.

But jokes aside, I think a lot of people overlook Distracting Shot. In encounters with mobs that have aggro wipes or periodically spawning adds, hunters assigned to tanks can be quite useful for controlling otherwise chaotic encounters. Bug Trio and Sartura immediately come to mind. They're also able to put out significant dps on aggro sensitive fights when other classes should be backing off (as an aside question, how does this translate on Thaddius? without spoiling the encounter, with the polarity damage boost thing I've been reading about, are hunters able to feign or do the mechanics of the fight prevent it?). There's also Scatter Shot to get mind-controlled people (Nef Phase 1, Skeram) the FUCK off a clothie in a pinch.

To me, a hunter's value lies in those times when things are going tits up, because they have a number of tools at their disposal that lets them do some pretty useful things in an emergency.

 

Mem

Patch might be a good setup für hunters. But: it is perfect for rogues. The damage of a rogue is greatly reduced as soon as more mobilty is involved. Lets look at encounters like sartura, TE, Anub eg or even Fankriss (specifically spawns). There the DPS of a hunter on single targets gets much better in relation to melee classes.
You have listed yourself quite a lot of situations where hunters are able to contribute in a non dps role. There are only a few examples where none of this aspects play a role. I cannot imagine any raid taking less than 4 hunters to a raid on a fairly consistent basis.

 

Steelfleece

Hunters are more flexible than some posts in here would have you believe, but no, we don't bring as much utility as a warlock or mage. We're basically as one-dimensional as rogues, but do less DPS in exchange for being slightly "safer," both to the raid and to ourselves.

I would like to see a greater degree of variation in the manner in which we deal damage than aimed shot every time it cools down and multi-shot on the same basis, like further expansion of our pet's role in the endgame and to make skills like Aimed Shot and Scattershot core abilities, allowing room for more raid-centric skills in their place.

affect –verb (used with object) 1. to act on; produce an effect or change in
effect –noun 1. something that is produced by an agency or cause; result; consequence
Know the difference.

 

Umph

I don't know that they could put specific raid centric abilities into the talent trees, but definately expand upon my pet's roll and let it do something more useful; i'd accept a loss in my personal DPS if some of it shifted to my pet, or it (the pet) became more viable to use whilst raiding. We all rolled a pet class, not a gimped Mage/Rogue.

 

Maledict

To the poster who said patchwerk was the best hunter damage fight - sorry, but are you insane? :)

Hunter damage is best on mobile fights. Hunters are the only ranged class that can maintain a high level of DPS without standing still for 3 seconds to cast. On *mobile* fights like Skeram, Sartura etc our hunters output a huge amount of the raids dps. That's where their DPs strength lies, not on "stand still and shoot constantly" fights - if that was where hunters DPs was best, there would be big issues with rogues and mages. (Remember, in Beta this used to be how hunters worked - the longer they stood in one spot, the more "focus" they had for dealing damage. They removed that because they didn't want hunters standing still all the time).

With regards to the armour being pointless - in my current talent build, I have Arcane Resilience and Improved Frost Armour. When we do trash packs in Naxx, I wear Ice Armour instead of Mage armour, bumping my physical reduction up to around 28 / 29% - I'm effectively wearing leather, and it shows. Out of all our mages, I survive far more than the rest. If putting on Ice Armour, and having Arcane Resilience, gives me such a big survivability boost (and it does), surely mail is providing an even bigger advantage?

 

Umph

I will admit that if I'd had the armor of a Rogue or Mage earlier today then I'd probably have lasted 2-3 seconds instead of the 4-5 I lasted whilst tanking one of the twin emps (I didn't pull aggro, I swear.)

 

Maledict

Lol, no amount of survivability is going to let you tank a raid boss. But lets face it - on most raid bosses, only a few people are getting anyway, and everyone else could be at 0 armour.

On everything else though - trash packs, bosses with adds, etc., having a higher armour is a real benefit. Definitely in Naxx so far, as a mage, having those two talents definitely boosts my survivability to a noticeable level abother other mages... :)

 

Farstrider

Difference here between absolute and relative.

Patchwerk is probably best _absolute_ total dmg fight for every class.

What is more interesting is relative dmg i.e. where do hunters outperform.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

• frmorrison

The other spell casters like Mages/Locks/Shaman, you certainly get Mana regen while casting your spell, as long as you are out of the 5 sec rule. I believe it used to be different a year ago.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Keltan

Honestly, I love the Tranq. Shot mechanic. Blizzard makes gimic encounters/bosses that play to certain classes to try and force people to bring a semi-balanced raid.

I can Tranq. Shot while doing my primary role of dps'ing.
Suppression room? Rogues disarm traps instead of dps'ing.
Any fight that requires sheeping/de-cursing? Mages do that instead of dps'ing.

Hunters are very lucky in their ability to continue doing their main role of dps unimpeded while using their gimic "have to have X of this class ability."