I would like to talk hunter deadzone in an environment where flames and L33t speak is kept to a minimum so thought this place would be the best.
Anyway with all the recent changes to trinkets and other classes abilities it seems to me like having the deadzone is growing an even larger part of why hunters often have such a hard time in PvP, especially in arena's.
I dont think deadzone should be removed, I think it makes sense that its there but the problem is that hunters dont have anything to offer a danger when someone enters the deadzone.
We do have traps, but that tool's usefullness got largely downgraded with the trinket change and besides wingclip that is our only instant melee skill unless we get a dodge so we can mongoose bite for 700 max we dont really have anything anyone can be scared off these days.
As I see it a possible solution to this could be that they change raptor strike to an instant like wingclip, and perhaps add a chance to stun the target for maybe 3 seconds. It should off course still remain on a 6 second CD.
It would not offer a lot more damage, but it should make us just a tad more dangerous to come within melee range.
Another option migth be to increase our white melee DPS, but I dont really think thats what hunters want.
I haven't PvPed a lot until recently so my gear is still rather lacking and my skill probably as well so some of the frustrations with hunter pvp might come from this, but I want to play a hunter so I guess I just have to learn and adapt...
While I do not have any solutions or ideas, but I believe we have serious issues in the Arenas. Numbers show it. Nobody playing a Hunter in WSVG tournament at Louisville is another good indicator. I am not saying there are no high ranked Hunters, because I finished off 4th in our 5v5 group.
With the new trinket change, our disadvantage at 2v2 and 3v3 is even bigger than before. Our traps except Frost Trap are almost useless, and our taps have a pretty massive cooldowns. Our ability to CC are almost gone unless we spec ourselves TBW. Let's be realistic though, we can't kill people within 18 seconds in the Arenas unless you are facing terrible players and horrible teams, depending on the situation of course.
I am pretty discouraged the fact that I cannot compete in the Arenas nowadays solely due to my class and not my skill, and teamwork abilities. My team has gone to a "DoT" team because even they agree that it is extremely overpowered, and winning games was a breeze unlike before. Even if we use our old lineup (The standard War/Priest/Pal lineup), a Shaman just bring much more utilities to the group than me.
We have a huge synergy problem, both in PvP and PvE. People exploit our weakness really easily these days, and with the trinket change, our ways of getting out are extremely difficult, and it's becoming a serious issue.
I agree, I've felt extremely limited recently in my 2v2 team, pretty much any class has a counter to my CC or kiting (intercept on a 20 second cooldown is just wrong and needs a change). My role has been mostly changed to a viper sting battery who tries to stay alive for as long as possible, hopefully running the other team OOM. I'm beginning to get frustrated to the point of considering switching my primary class.
Some changes I think that are needed are:
1. Severe increase in burst damage
With a mage or warlock, they can CC the healer (with a targeted CC even) of a 2v2 and there's a decent chance that, given a full 12 second CC, they'll be able kill the other player. That's just not the case for a hunter.
2. Less limitations on our CC
I thought it was stupid when traps were made resistible to start, it's beyond silly that a rogue can avoid half of them with CloS and that shamans can absorb them with grounding totems. They're on a very long cooldown and actually require someone to step in them to work, they should at least be reliable.
3. Less ring around the pillar
Nothing annoys me more than a class running around the Nagrand pillars for as long as they choose to regenerating mana or whatever as I chase them frivolously. Usually even a freezing trap on one side isn't enough for me to get more than an arcane/auto combo (which is like 1-2k damage depending on crits).
I think it's more frustrating that I am at ranged, but errors light up saying I'm not at ranged to shoot. At the same time, melee are still whacking at me from this distance and I can't raptor strike or wing clip either, so it's another dive back in to try and get ranged again. I can understand the difference in positions players have in the game because data needs to be sent back and forth, but this type of issue is extremely frustrating.
I am one that's for getting rid of this deadzone. Replace the deadzone with a shooting distance that penalizes damage dealt or alters the chance to hit by a percentage if they think we're really that overpowered from shooting at this distance.
I think it's more frustrating that I am at ranged, but errors light up saying I'm not at ranged to shoot. At the same time, melee are still whacking at me from this distance and I can't raptor strike or wing clip either, so it's another dive back in to try and get ranged again. I can understand the difference in positions players have in the game because data needs to be sent back and forth, but this type of issue is extremely frustrating.
I am one that's for getting rid of this deadzone. Replace the deadzone with a shooting distance that penalizes damage dealt or alters the chance to hit by a percentage if they think we're really that overpowered from shooting at this distance.
Sorry for the rant.
Yeah, lag makes situations like you described in the first paragraph. I personally do not see a difference if I have minor run speed or not, because lag clouds it completely, making it no difference at all whatsoever. But that's just me.
Eliminating the deadzone at this point is like asking for energy instead of mana; a substantial change that has no chance ever coming to fruiton. Discussion would be better served about how to deal with it or more reasonable changes.
I feel hunter is the class that got nerfed the most when resilience got introduced. Pre tbc hunters were able to nuke down their target before they got into their deadzone. At the moment this is more or less impossible, and weakens the hunter alot. Removing or reducing the deadzone would be too imbalanced pre-tbc, but now I wouldn't say it is. Deadzone especially hurts in the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets.
The deadzone is much more of a problem for hunters in 2v2/3v3 than 5v5(and much more a problem in Blade's edge than elsewhere, really) - smaller fights in environments with more obstructions are much more irritating. I don't really have too much objection to the geometry of Nagrand and Lordaeron for 5v5.
The minimum range issue, though, make it extremely easy to put a hunter on the defensive. All you have to do really, is move towards him, and he has to retreat if he wishes to maintain most of his offensive arsenal against you.
As for what can/should be done:
-Undo all the premature nerfs that Blizzard rolled out based on level 60 PvP complaints, before even letting the game play out at 70(Arcane Shot chiefly, also Barrage/Imp. Barrage). While 2.0 + level 60 made hunters really ridiculous in BG's and world PvP, increased stamina/resilience plus the addition of the more confined quarters of arenas were really more than an adequate curtailment of our power. But the developers(yes, the same developers who said "let's wait and see how the warrior rage scenario pans out once they get some gear") decided to drop the hammer on arcane shot and barrage/imp. barrage before any significant portion of the WoW population had hit 70, let alone obtained reasonable amounts of stam/resilience gear.
-New 4-piece bonus on our arena set. Really. Trap cooldown reduction, small minimum range reduction(2 yards?), or... well, anything really, would be a nice upgrade over a cooldown reduction on a skill we don't spam anyways. If we got something on par with what warriors got(or even half as good) that would be a big boost.
-More suitable speeds on PvP weapons. Season 1 weapon started out as 3.2, got nerfed to 3.1 with the ilvl/reitemization changes to epics, and Season 2 is even worse at 3.0. I don't know of any other class that saw their primary weapon see a speed nerf from season 1 to season 2. This was/is just silly, and there's really no reason we should't be able to get a ~3.2 speed ranged weapon for arenas(this would be roughly on par with the speed options available to rogues/warriors on their arena weapons, if you look at historical speed distribution ranges for 1H/2H/ranged weapons).
-Give us some better PvP itemization options for non-set gear. Gear with AP/Crit Rating and no agility is a subpar setup for hunters. The one-size-fits-all approach to hunter/rogue/warrior/feral druid non-armor PvP gear is really infuriating.
-Give Survival spec some sort of anti-caster ability, please. Deep survival spec is just a complete and utter joke right now in PvP when compared with Marksmanship or Beast Mastery Spec.
-Give ranged attacks some of the same "wiggle room" on a target moving towards us that melee has on a target moving away from them. It's just silly/stupid to be 10-12 yards away from someone on my screen, and be getting a "you are too close" message, while melees are beating on me. And it happens all the time. It's not a fun thing to play with, and hunters, being the only class with a minimum range, are the only class that has to deal with this absurdity.
-Some sort of defensive ability/way to break a DPS train. As of right now, we're often considered a much more vulnerable target than most leather/cloth, because we don't have a lot to mitigate damage besides our armor/dodge/parry, and nothing significant to derail a DPS train coming our way. (Of course, this works against us in terms of perception with the general public too, who say "but you have mail!", neglecting to mention that we lack the defensive tools to simply avoid taking damage in the first place that many more-lightly-armored classes have)
I could go on, but I think I've gone far enough, for now.
Last edited by Celnathor : 06/25/07 at 12:19 AM.
Reason: spacing for readability
Hmm, on a funny note, hunters should be able to run backwards at normal speed
Now, seriously, our melee attacks need some serious PVP utility, and making counterattack and concussive barrage untalented abilities would probably help, without being seriously overpowered... On the other hand, at the rate that CB procs right now, i don't think it will make a difference anyway...
Also, some kind of crowd control breaking ability would help, other than the ridiculosly useless PVP trinket.
Stings could possibly scale with gear or AP, and viper sting doesn't really need the existing cooldown.
Volley could be added a slowing effect, and, hopefully made castable while moving, kinda like the grenades... after all, it's some kind of covering fire...
Silencing shot could probably become untalented, and the 41 point talent replaced with Improved silencing shot, that adds a curse of tongues-like debuff to the target
Oh, and it's not quite a PVP issue, but steadyshot could at least scale witha arrow dps.
Originally Posted by XI-
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
3. Less ring around the pillar
Nothing annoys me more than a class running around the Nagrand pillars for as long as they choose to regenerating mana or whatever as I chase them frivolously. Usually even a freezing trap on one side isn't enough for me to get more than an arcane/auto combo (which is like 1-2k damage depending on crits).
I just gotta say i love ring around the pillar. Mend pet on pet with i think 150 frost/fire resist (maybe fire/shadow) and he tears apart casters as I am completely avoiding their damage. Lay a frost trap (or snake trap depending on who it is, no AoE and it's snake) to buy even more time.
Or, warrior/pal vs pal/hunter. Other paladin is running around LoS. My pet is on their paladin, warrior on me. We both have freedom, it wears off i snare him pally comes outa LoS and I viper him. Then I run away behind the far pillar and scatter trap the warrior. Now the other pally needs to run further to come and dispell it, as he does this, its another viper. Mend pet keeps JoW off my pet. Should we be losing the mana war, i can scatter trap warrior behind a pillar from the other pally and my partner drinks arena water.
If the warrior goes for my pally, he heals himself keeping himself up, and I use intim. on the oposite pally, or a snake trap or just wingclip and I get into position to viper him, then my pally runs far away from theirs and I scatter trap their warrior. By using LoS and the other teams pallies desire to not stay in LoS of me we can easily drastically reduce the other warrior's damaging capabilities while draining the pallies mana and keeping him in combat.
Now, seriously, our melee attacks need some serious PVP utility, and making counterattack and concussive barrage untalented abilities would probably help, without being seriously overpowered... On the other hand, at the rate that CB procs right now, i don't think it will make a difference anyway....
Im not sure if they have to give us some of the current talents as "core" abilities, but from my point of view it would definately eliviate some of our issues a lot if we actually presented a danger with melee.
And just so we wont step on the real melee classes toes I would say it should be something similar to raptor strike, but instant and perhaps with a chance of stun or something.
And some kind of sprint to get out of melee and out of deadzone might also help.
Im not sure if they have to give us some of the current talents as "core" abilities, but from my point of view it would definately eliviate some of our issues a lot if we actually presented a danger with melee.
And just so we wont step on the real melee classes toes I would say it should be something similar to raptor strike, but instant and perhaps with a chance of stun or something.
And some kind of sprint to get out of melee and out of deadzone might also help.
Gotta second...
The best way for a hunter to survive is to keep moving... and yet we have very little to keep us in our effective ranges. It would REALLY help out (without the dreaded overpowering) to have a skill to move out of range, or stun, or be able to get un-stunned. Or even (we are suppost to be HUNTERS... you know, stealthy people who sneak up on our prey) a conceilment skill to get us out of close combat or distance targeting.
There definately needs to be a fix of some kind, I'm tired of being on the receiving end of unanswered mele damage...
The best way for a hunter to survive is to keep moving... and yet we have very little to keep us in our effective ranges. It would REALLY help out (without the dreaded overpowering) to have a skill to move out of range, or stun, or be able to get un-stunned. Or even (we are suppost to be HUNTERS... you know, stealthy people who sneak up on our prey) a conceilment skill to get us out of close combat or distance targeting.
I hate to say it but everything you are asking for is pretty clearly overpowered. Hunters do need some love as far as arena versatility goes (which is basically just viper sting, which, granted, is extremely potent when used by someone who understands how to play things)... but come on, you have to be realistic. Asking for stealth, or an ability to break out of stun or escape melee combat is borderline comical.
If you want to play the 'hunter roleplay' card, I would say that hunters are more 'find a good position and wait' than 'sneak up on prey'. In that respect, something like the night elf racial would be a good ability, but full stealth? You've got to be kidding.
Originally Posted by Halbard
I'm tired of being on the receiving end of unanswered mele damage...
Unfortunately, that is one of the drawbacks of your class. I'd get laughed at if I, as a Paladin, asked to be able to do half of the normal ret based dps from ranged. If a serious petition went up to ask for 400 ranged dps for paladins, how hard would you laugh?
It's the same situation in reverse. Yes, it sucks when a rogue gets into your deadzone (in the same way it sucks when a hunter/mage/warlock is perched on a hill/obstacle and I have no easy way to get up to him - I have to run away and hope he follows me) but that's a part of the game and it's a part of the class. Play to your strengths and weaknesses.
I also believe our sustain damage hurts us more than anyone in the Arenas since Arenas is really about burst. That, combined with LoS issues, makes our class having some issues when it comes to burst. Elemental Shamans usually does less damage than a Hunter, but their huge burst has a much bigger impact in changing the game than our damage. Their burst can kill people faster than us. Doing the most damage in the Arena is pretty meaningless when your opponents are still standing. DoT's are sustain damage, but they are not affected by Resilience and are stackable.
I also believe our sustain damage hurts us more than anyone in the Arenas since Arenas is really about burst. That, combined with LoS issues, makes our class having some issues when it comes to burst. Elemental Shamans usually does less damage than a Hunter, but their huge burst has a much bigger impact in changing the game than our damage. Their burst can kill people faster than us. Doing the most damage in the Arena is pretty meaningless when your opponents are still standing. DoT's are sustain damage, but they are not affected by Resilience and are stackable.
Everytime I see a hunter in 5vs5, I make sure they die first, even over an Elemental Shaman. Why? Because Elemental Shamans are annoying from the Chain Lighting burst, but a Hunter is a far bigger threat in genreal when it comes to traps, stings and just genreal burst damage.
I think that's really subjective. I fought a lot of 5v5's in Season 1 and the targets that are usually primarily focused are either the Mage, Warlock, or the Priest. Reason we rarely go for the Hunter is because their burst and limited mana pool is simply not enough to take down my team members. Like I said, this is subjective. There are exceptions but I am just saying. You can say the same thing for a Warlock/Mage/Priest. If you leave them alone, they can be extremely dangerous as well.
Good MM Hunter is a pain, if I had some screenshots I could use those as basically examples of what happens when you leave a Hunter alone.
Mages generally aren't big enough threats that it's worth killing first, and unless you're running a full ranged team a waste of time, Shadow Priests are annoying but are secondary priority and can be ignored if needed to kill someone worse.
Enova's ideas are entertaining and would certainly cheer me up (volley as a flamestrike-like instant!).
Ranged attacks at melee range, or more untalented abilities to regain range, or deal serious (but not as much) hurt at melee, seem warranted.
Deadzone is no big deal in pve, and is crippling in pvp. Note that steady shot would still be 100% unusable when taking damage, so there would still be a reason/advantage to stick a melee on a hunter.
Lag and the server-side cast (compared to melee which presumably get some fudge aside from backstab issues) is what really makes the dead zone frustrating.
Well, I'm going to try and break this post into what I see as our major problems in the arena.
First off, I think one of our major flaws in the arena is our sustainability.
Out of all the mana using dps classes with the exception of basically shadow priests, we just go oom way too fast in longer arena matches.
I've mentioned this on the general forums a few times, and I really think viper sting siphoning mana back to the hunter would help alleviate this issue with going oom (two-three mana burns basically makes me worthless for anything but auto-shot the rest of the match). The benefit of changing viper sting to function as a mana drain vs mana burn, is that it barely affects PvE balance in anyway. We might be able to grind caster mobs a bit quicker, but who cares, nothing can compete with an affliction warlock in regards to grinding mobs anyway.
Another thing is our burst is no where comparable to what it was pre-tbc (which when you get down to it, was outright overpowered at the time, renataki's charm basically meant anyone was an hk outside of a felguard lock with a black book). Being physical damage with a mana pool is just rough. We can't burst down any high armor targets with the efficiency of a caster, and we don't have anywhere near the sustainability of a rogue or warrior. It's pretty sad when my arcane shot crits for 100-200 damage more than what a frost mage's fireblast hits for. Ironically, in our supposed best matrix for 5v5 (warr/pally/priest/hunter/mage), an elemental shaman fits in so much better because they bring EM+NS Chain Lightning on the BoP'd target to get the crucial killing blow, something we can't do. On top of that, they have bloodlust, windfury totem, and can substitute as a second healer when things are going to shit.
The other issue seems to be the lack of ability to kite in the arena, due to los, and such a small area. I'm sure most of the posters here are quite capable of solo killing 3-5 people by themselves in a setting like AV where you have free room to kite across the map and pull people into adds and what not, but that isn't the case in the arena. I can't maintain a 25-41 yard range to keep from getting caught by intercept. If imp wingclip or entrapment procs, the warrior gains second wind and that usually hurts more than it helps if said warrior still has a healer up. Without being BM spec, there is almost nothing you can do to get away from a warrior or rogue when your trinket is on CD and you don't have a pally to baby sit you with freedom.
Of course on the other hand you can spec BM, but then you have 0 reliable spell interrupts (and no, intimidation is NOT a reliable "on-demand" interrupt for spells, especially considering pet's travel time, the possibility of a miss, resist, dodge, parry, etc, and on top of that, it doesn't even land on the target if they have a shield of some sort up). Deep Survival specs are in an even worse boat with no interrupts what-so-ever. That basically leaves us as the only dps class without a valid spell interrupt (even a holy priest can fear and pallies can HoJ).
I'm almost wondering if they should just take away the planting requirement to fire auto-shot, as that is what really seems to kill our damage output (as well as return barrage/imp barrage/arcane shot to the Pre-TBC levels they were at as Celnathor mentioned). Maybe if deterrence reduced a % of damage taken while active it would make a deep survival spec more attractive as a PvP build (readiness would really help to break assist trains). But even then, no one is going to drop a deep marks spec for 5v5 until we have a non talented spell interrupt, so that's probably a wash. Maybe they could make mongoose bite lose the dodge requirement and work like pummel for those pillar humpers (or while on the topic of this, making distracting shot have a use in PvP by causing it to disrupt the current target's spell from being cast, like earth-shock does), in addition to making raptor strike an instant ability. That would probably give us just enough burst and control to stop someone from running in circles around a pillar with 5% mana and spamming flash of light to keep themselves topped off. Don't even get me started on stacking lifebloom shifting to travel form, and running from pillar to pillar and drinking in 2v2 (and their teammate always kill the pet too, as pets die extremely fast due to their complete lack of resilience and stamina scaling to any notable degree).
Anyway, everything else I was going to mention already seems to be covered in this thread (Concussive barrage being a joke compared to something like mace spec, steady shot being worthless with any sort of incoming damage due to our lack of spell push back resistance, etc.), so I'll just stop now before this turns into a wow general-esque rant.
I honestly don't know if I enjoy playing my hunter in arenas. I did all of season 1 without a paladin and had a horrible time. We hovered around 1900 all season long. This season we have a paladin and are off to a decent start. It's like night and day. I can actually get away from people from time to time now thanks to BoF and BoP. However as it was stated earlier I feel like I am holding my team back. Sure my interrupts are decent and the trap helps everyone get away from melee damage, but an elemental shaman just brings so much more to the table. I hope the developers took a look at the WSVG numbers and realized there issues with some classes in arenas. Even druids were better represented.
I think our team underestimates Hunters. Whenever we ignore Hunters, we tend to get reamed (hi Hau).
To combat this, we're going to simply kill Hunter pets first then just have the entire 5 man team sit on top of the Hunter and follow him around while I chain Purge BoFs as the Warrior spams Improved Hamstring and hopefully procs some WFs.
Our team ran (and still runs) with a hunter for the entirety of season 1 and I think they definitely are underestimated and can be extremely dangerous when someone who knows what they are doing is behind the keyboard.
Ignoring the huge benefit that viper sting+scorpid poison brings to the table, hunters make a healers life incredibly easy with frost trap (unkillable earthbind++) and intelligent teammates. The two warrior teams that can be popular are a joke, and if somehow it's not a team with melee, snake trap really fucks casters (elemental shaman in particular) up.
Not only is our hunter great for mana degen and unavoidable snare, but if they are the correct spec they can do wonders at shutting down a healer or a mana burning priest with silencing shot and scatter shot.
Also fuck this post wasn't about deadzone at all...
Our team ran (and still runs) with a hunter for the entirety of season 1 and I think they definitely are underestimated and can be extremely dangerous when someone who knows what they are doing is behind the keyboard.
Ignoring the huge benefit that viper sting+scorpid poison brings to the table, hunters make a healers life incredibly easy with frost trap (unkillable earthbind++) and intelligent teammates. The two warrior teams that can be popular are a joke, and if somehow it's not a team with melee, snake trap really fucks casters (elemental shaman in particular) up.
Not only is our hunter great for mana degen and unavoidable snare, but if they are the correct spec they can do wonders at shutting down a healer or a mana burning priest with silencing shot and scatter shot.
Also fuck this post wasn't about deadzone at all...
I don't disagree with some of what you've said, but hunters are largely pigeonholed in 5v5 into an "outlast" role, because our damage sure isn't scaring anyone in decent gear. They work extremely well in that role against non-gib group setups, but are absolutely bad in any sort of real DPS role("viper sting/frost trap bitch" would be a better description of a hunter's role in 5v5 arenas than anything else). The only other class I see constrained in a similar manner in 5v5's are rogues, who don't pair well with warriors, and tend to lose effectiveness unless they're running with a high-DPS "gib" team in most cases. None of the caster/healer classes(nor warriors) are forced into such a narrow niche in this manner.
And while scorpid poison is nice for covering viper sting, a pet that maxes at around 9k HP(with Fort/kings/Commanding Shout)/0 resilience is easy prey for any team that wants to kill it at the start of a fight. I don't see a lot of teams that go for it(though ironically just about every EJ team I've faced has smartly done this, which has made my life a whole lot harder in endurance matches against 2+ healers), but when my pet's out of the fight, getting a viper sting to stick is a good bit harder.
And of course, that's in 5v5, which is our "strength" in arenas.
Quoting this from an unknown source. Elemental Shaman > Hunter in that typical setup. One example would be Nitrana's Elemental Shaman over Reznap as the standard 5v5 now from Power Trip.
I'm sure most of your hunter experience in 5's is coming from fighting teams like Invasion's Pro Up. They stack scorpid poisons on one of your healers and their priest assists the hunters with the mana burning and they just try to outlast you.
Now, look at what they run:
Warrior + mage + hunter + paladin + priest.
Exact same as Power Trip, a very popular team that made regionals. Their hunter, likewise, has an identical talent build to theirs, 41/20 (or 42/19 or some 1-2 point ofshoot of it).
Now consider this:
To my knowledge (and I have searched far and wide), there is not a single top 5 5v5 team in the entire world that includes a hunter and does not have a "backbone" of warrior + paladin + priest. While that may seem normal to mesh well with certain other classes, in fact there is not a single other class in warcraft that REQUIRES a backbone of 3 combined classes in order to exist in the top 5.
You may immediately think somethink like "oh I'm sure warriors do", but think long and hard on it, there are top 5 5v5 teams that include warrior that don't require mage + paladin + priest to be in all of them (for example).
Well what is so bad about a class requiring 3 combined classes in order to compete? Nothing much. Except that:
Hunters are pigeonholed into only competing in a SINGLE bracket (5v5), using a SINGLE talent build (0/41/20), with a SINGLE makeup (with maybe 1 class that can be swapped out, the mage).
No other class in warcraft lacks that much diversity.
06/24/07, 6:59 PM
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