Pre-2.0, it would be a mortal sin to take more than 2-3 hunters to a Naxx raid, simply because of the nature of the encounters not coinciding with a hunters class strengths (apart from Tranq shot on Gluth). Fundamentally, hunters fit in as a "DPS" class who are able to go as hard out as possible with only a slight risk of threat limiting dps. However, hunters fall short on damage compared to other dps classes, such as Rogues, Warlocks and Mages. Unfortunately for hunters, the majority of Naxx encounters are DPS races, and are basically every class pushing out as much horsepower as possible.

Pre-2.0, I liked to compare a hunter to a Rally car, they can easily maneuver around corners and be quite flexible and controllable in a slower environment, but in an all out, throw out everything you got scenario (ie straight road with no gimmicks), they will be easily outrun by a big beefy V8 supercharged car (ie Rogue, mage, warlocks).

However, since 2.0, I have noticed a massive turn of events with hunters in Naxx. On trash, a hunter or two would always be in the top 5 on Damage. On most boss fights a hunter was sitting between 4th and 10th on damage. But most impressive was Loatheb. With the help of a shadow priest (with vampiric touch), a hunter clocked second on a Loatheb kill, pretty much wasting all of the warlocks, rogues and most mages.

Another encounter we found hunters to be extremely useful in is Noth. With the combination of traps, and using their pets, this fight became a whole lot easier.

In combat traps for Gluth was another huge plus, we were able to control the adds much easier by having four frost traps in the kiting area, allowing many of our warriors to be on DPS duty rather than howling.

Are other guilds also finding hunters very viable in 2.0? Are your guilds happy to be taking more hunters to Naxx since 2.0?

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9516

It would probably be better to ask this here, rather than create a new thread.

Sounds more like your hunters couldn't maximize their damage properly before 2.0 to me.

"Warlocks are terrible DPS" and "Hunters are terrible DPS" are two of the biggest myths I've seen in raiding. It isn't the class that's mediocre, it is the vast majority of the players who choose the class.

Pre-2.0, there was in fact nothing wrong with "Hunters + Naxxramas" -- it is indeed a myth. Naxx is balanced in such a way that DPS min-maxing is, in my opinion, only necessary when ALL your DPS classes are falling short. Or to put it another way; assuming your raid having 5tanks and 15 healers: It takes 20 DPSers to tango.

Take Patchwerk as the perfect numeric example. You need roughly 9500 raid DPS to kill him within 7 minutes. With 20 damage dealers in your raid that means an average of 475DPS per person. When a hunter does NOT play his class well, he will indeed end up doing only about 450-475DPS. But does that mean that your rogues & mages aren't able to compensate for that by doing 500~600DPS? Easily?



We've killed everything in Naxx up until 4H with 4-6 hunters in raid, and are by no means an amazingly strong guild in my opinion. Deciding who we take on raids is completely based on signup order. Could we have prevented a few 1% wipes by taking 2 more rogues/mages? Surely. In the greater scheme of things (running a guild long-term) does this really matter? Not at all in my opinion.

What does matter I think is that we had C'thun on farm before we started venturing into Naxx. Having your rogues in MC/BWL gear shouldn't help them achieving 700DPS figures ;)


Then on to Hunters in Patch 2.0.1: Yes; our DPS has increased - but I believe especially so for those hunters who were already pushing the envelope. I'm quite sure those hunters who were stuck at 450dps at Patch will remain being stuck there. Or 'jump' up to 500dps through better pet scaling and scream for joy. But it will be those hunters, who already pushed close to 600dps pre-patch, who will make the greater impact and improvement. Hunter being no1 on Patch has already been achieved.


Then on your other points I can be brief: Traps aren't any different this patch or last week. We just don't have to Feign Death to put them down anymore. And pets we've always had. But then again maybe you did not mean these two points in relation to Patch 2.0 :) Yes hunters add that extra utility in those encounters.

The new frost trap is completely different than it used to be. Even when I am out of it I still have the slowing effect for 10-15 seconds.

A mortal sin :( ?

We have the same number of hunters in naxx 1.13 as we did in 1.3 or whenever it was we started raiding, and all the patches between. Whatever failings the raid may have had had nothing to do with hunters being "incompatible with naxx".

But yeah, hunter DPS is up, and hunter utility is up (not the traps and pet things you mentioned since those haven't really changed significantly), but the shifting of our primary DPS spell to an instant cast, and the addition of a ranged silence.

I just wish they'd move hawk eye back to like tier1 marks or something. Having to heal hunters on Anub makes me want to strangle kittens.

The hunters can bandage, heal the pets! =p

Yea Vhex heal my damn pet. Anyway we're taking the exact hunter set-up (4) we took pre-patch, except now instead of falling mid/end of the pack, we're topping the DMs. It's not the kind of change where you suddenly double your hunter class lineup and start booting rogues, it's just a pleasant adjustment that places the class (in my opinion at least) where they should be on the DMs.

The fights that hunters 'excel' at really are almost any fight except Thaddius and Loatheb. Our best fights are probably Patchwerk (now that we can compete for near-top slots), Gluth and Heigan. I honestly think that Heigan is the best fight for hunters and ranged DPS in general: we don't have to worry about dodging splashes unless we're on the dance phase, and our shots are great for helping clear the Eyestalk room so people ported don't get blasted.

There are some points that I agree with from Aero. I think if you put equally skilled Mages, Warlocks, Rogues, DPS Warriors and Hunters together, Hunters usually fell short. I could finish in the top 5 on the DMs on trash and even on certain boss fights in Naxx prior to 2.0. Usually, I would finish somewhere between 7th to 10th on average.

Now, I'm competing for top 3, especially for pet friendly encounters. On a recent Noth kill, I was 7,000 damage short of our two best rogues, and I probably made the difference being the sacrificial marking bitch for all the melee.

On the other hand, I agree that skill and knowledge played a major role. Seeing hunters replace Crossbow of Smiting with Huhuran's Stinger makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

Edit: I meant replacing Smiting with Huhu's prior to 2.0. Sorry for the confusion.

My DPS went up substantially, very much more than 100 DPS. This is mostly due to the increased damage i get from my pet and also from the ability to DPS from a more mobile perspective (4-hman, Heigan, Grob, Noth to a lesser degree). I went from being lucky to get somewhere in the top 10, to breaking top 5 consistantly. I think this has a lot to do with GTFF and the windserpent, and also the reduction to rogue/dps warrior damage.

I even landed a top 10 slot on Thaddius, which was a rare case for me indeed and a number 3 spot on Loatheb. Hunter DPS has certainly gone up. That being said, i wouldnt want to stack the raid with hunters, simply because hunters are still questionable dps on some fights. We have 3-4 hunters, and thats about as many as we take.

In reference to the hunter replacing smiting with huhuran's, i dont think the difference in those two weapans warrants a "lol", however the BWL is better. If you really use the hell out of GFTT and LB, then the faster your shooting the better, <<to a degree>>. If you give up a little multi-shot damage to get more LB procs, thats not really a poor decision. I use a Soulstring over a BWL Xbow, even though it has weaker Multi-shots. When i rank down for long fights, its multishot im ranking down to begin with since im not in 6 CS. I get more focus procs, more quickshots procs, and its a higher dps weapan. Works out for me.

No, the title says it all.

FD gets resisted very often in Gluth due to adds running around near the trapping location. Its a huge difference.

On your other points, I think your way off the mark. It is a fact that hunters will almost always never beat/equal a similarly geared/skilled rogue, warlock or mage in a pure DPS race. Obviously there are variables, like a player dying early, lesser skilled players etc, but to say that a hunter can compete with the other DPS classes is pretty silly (pre 2.0 that is).

You pointed out that you only need to pass a certain DPS threshhold and then your fine. This is a pretty odd comment and totally misses the point. Thats like saying "Lets use smite priests in Naxx because they can do the job, but the job would be much harder".

Due to hunter's ability to hit at long range, superior agro control, superior mitigation and such they better not be hitting substantially harder than rogues, mages or locks. Especially rogues. If hunters are dominating rogues in single target damage, something is broken.

Much like the hunter in a premier guild on our server using General's gloves and Toxin Injector.

Edit: That was alittle off-topic. Back on topic however, how many Naxx hunters that are noticing a significant increase in DPS using a combination of 39/12 and/or a Windserpent? In relation to more traditional 7/41/3 spec'd hunters?

Our resident "BM Tester" hunter managed to get 6th in Patchwerk DPS last night. He is specced 41/10/0 because he loves TBW too much to let it go.

Before praising BM damage too much, I'd wait for some better damage parsers.
SWStats and DamageMeters had a ~35k (Edit: Or was it 75k? Can't remember... Was pretty big anyway) disparity for me on Patchwerk. Both were set to treat pet data as my own.
DamageMeters had Lightning Breath dealing roughly 20-25k damage in a fight lasting about 5:30-6 minutes.

And stop spewing nonsense like "Pre-2.0, it would be a mortal sin to take more than 2-3 hunters to a Naxx raid".

sorry for noob question but what the heck is GFTT

//edit
aarg I've got it on my own

We are quite recent to down Patchwerk (3-4 times before patch 2.0) and our raid-leaders were very wary about bringing too many hunters to the encounter (4 being max.), a thing that annoyed us no end.

Yesterday due to general low raid-activity in guild he had to take all hunters he could (6 I believe) and we had him down easy with a minute to spare. Food for thought to our raid-leader. :)

You are so noob you don't even have a world of warcraft characer!

(PS: fill out your profile.)

Going BM without GFTT? You should tell him to get a proper pve spec :)

Thats utter rubbish. Assuming equal gear it should be expected in a majority of fights for hunters to be pushing for top5 in most fights.

Also superior mitigation? When was the last time that helped anyone. And because of it we are not mean't to hit as hard as mages/locks?