How are we going to be overpowered nothing is changing.

We can shoot from BARELY closer and our arcane shot has a 1 buff dispel on it. Those are the ONLY changes.

Nothing will change except it will be slightly less annoying to play a hunter in regards to having active ranged abilities.

Basically nothing is changing.

The leeway given to melee classes seems to allow them to white hit for far outside of 5 yards at times. Usually this is not a problem, since most white hits don't slow; but when that white hit from the Rogue 9 yards away procs crippling, or the Warrior from 8 yards away procs mace stun on you, it gets extremely frustrating.

While I don't think the hunter changes will make us anything close to overpowered, the claim that nothing is changing is equally ridiculous. The dead zone change is far from trivial - being able to land shots while you're doing a re-trap run through adds a lot of extra damage over the course of a game. Arcane Shot dispelling trash buffs means less global cooldowns for your real dispellers to spend purging someone down, and the ability to clutch remove a BoP or freedom is huge. While the MS aimed shot isn't nearly what it's cracked up to be, it's certainly something that can have a significant impact on the outcome of games. I know I'm very much looking forward to 2.3, even if I'm not at all convinced it has everything we need.

I think one of the major problems hunters have, and i have never seen this point stressed enough here or the wow forums, it's the lack of interrupt casting abilities (and i refer especially to an interrupt healing one). It's an area where all other DPS classes excel (rogues, mages, warriors,) and other classes have some indirect ways to interrupt on longer cooldowns (fear, Hammer of justice, earth shock!!!).

Hunters are the only class in game without a non-talented interrupt casting ability.

Before TBC our pet were our interrupt casting friends, but right now the chew-chew-paw-paw is not so efficient anymore. Sometimes having fast attack speeds against a healer buffs the healer! See priests bless res or shaman shield. Most of the healers have extremely efficient push back reduction that almost nullify our pet pressure.

The interruption abilities we get with talents are on long cooldowns.

Last, in arena healers are often splattered against a pillar; i have found that the only reliable spell interrupt is scatter shot. You don't have enough time to reach the healer on his side of the pillar, gain 8 yard and go with silencing shot. The other melee range interrupt, Intimidation, its not a truly instant and often happens a fraction of second late.

Lack of interrupts? Silencing Shot, Scatter, Intimidation are pure jesus juice. Granted you can't have all 3 - but the options are there. Paladins have the option of Repentance, which is deep in a useless tree, and blood elf silence - which Hunters can get as well.

I wonder how hard Hamchook is going to dominate in S3 as well with these changes. I know we're excited on our 5v5 to be able to recoup some of the abilities lost by not using an Elemental Shaman via Arcane Shot and MS.

I think your overestimating the abilities.

AS/MS is going to be like a mage trying to cast a pyroblast in the arena.

3.5 sec with no pushback reduction + deadzone + LoS. Good luck getting one off.

Arcane shot = 1 buff 5/6 sec, Purge = 2 buffs on GCD. Shamans can rip buffs nearly 10x as fast as hunters. On your average priest/warlock 5man there are plenty of trash buffs up.

It could take a hunter quite a while to get someone down to where an arcane shot will eat the BOP, and then you have to consider any type of hots etc. There are already warlocks on 2.3PTR setting up and testing macros to reapply water breathing for 2v2 and 3v3.

A hunter won't be able to apply MS either. Unless the shot gets a complete revamp in cast time. Relying on a hunter for the healing debuff IMO would be a very bad idea.

@ Manaburn. Well it would be like this trade a few manaburns for your hunter. If that priest isn't healing a hunter that is getting FFd that hunter is either A. going to die rather fast(see no spell mitigation, warriors still get rocked fast at times with defensive stance, and SRef.
Or the hunter is going to be constantly LoSing and running which can still lead to a death from a single CS on your paladin. Which basically turns the fight into a 4v5.

I know why you run rogue instead of warrior on your team. The reasons behind that are fairly obvious, and I know why perty didn't play the games that got you guys to 2400.

The changes in 2.3 will do next to nothing to offset those reasons.

I was wondering if the 4yd DZ is enough. I was envisioning none at all, which would at least give hunters an option in the "freedom war." What I mean is that the hunter gets charged/intercepted, then hamstrung, so he needs freedom to get away, while the warrior needs freedom to stay on him within the trap. With no DZ, a team would have the option of just letting the hunter tank while doing full or at least significant DPS (as other classes can to a point) and still use freedom offensively on one of their other players. Also, hunters in lower brackets wouldn't be reliant on a paladin to escape melee as much either - which seems additionally useful because they synergize much better with priests for mana burn.

I guess in general you have to ask who Blizzard is trying to replace (or offer an alternative to) in a "standard" 5v5 roster. The MS change seems like they would be adding something to compete with the warrior/rogue slot, but it really depends how usable it ends up being. Also, if it is really functional, you start to wonder if all ranged 5v5s will become a standard setup.

Err - your post makes it unclear if you understand what the deadzone is. The deadzone has always referred to the range at which an opponent is too far away to be hit by melee but too close to hit with ranged attacks. It has never meant the inability to hit people in melee with ranged attacks, which is what you seem to be suggesting.

I don't think the changes really impact the role of a hunter in arena - simply their effectiveness in that role. Hunters will still only truly shine on teams built around them - that is mana burn/outlast teams. Our lack of real burst and our vulnerability to LOS makes us unreliable for a real DPS role on a burst team, except perhaps as BM, and BM runs into huge problems with the lack of pet resilience out there.

What I was envisioning with the DZ change was essentially making it so you could fire at anyone inside 41 yards, even if they were punching you in the face. I know that's not technically considered "dead," but with a lack of real melee ability I think it's sort of a moot point. Any time a hunter can't fire his ranged weapon I'd consider it "dead."

So yeah, if you removed it completely and allowed hunters to just sit there and soak damage like many other classes can do, you would give them another option. I especially think this would help average hunters who just get raped by LOS and DZ issues.

I agree wholeheartedly. Auto-shot is very punishing in its current form, and needs a good review.

I also agree with some of the other people here when they mention that we still do suffer under melee with the massive snare spam that exists in the game. I've seen this stated a few times, and while I do agree, I have to think that it's hard to manage an anti-spamstring type ability that has the potential turn Hunters into some ridiculously efficient kiting class of doom that no one can touch while they obliterate you with instants, etc. (In fact, I think a lot of people see us as just that, either due to old 2.0 pre-TBC BGs, or just an incessant hatred of a class that they have some trouble catching for some reason (which is odd in and of itself, because once we get a melee class' snare on us we're pretty much screwed unless grouped with a pally).)

But anyway, there's a fine balance between options for dealing with the incessant snare spam (which, admittedly, melee classes kinda sorta need) and making the class into an unbeatable monster vs. melee (or certain classes). (See the proverbial Frost Mage v. Warrior matchup for a good example of that.)

Having some way of ensuring that we're not almost completely and utterly helpless in melee range would go a long way to helping the class as a whole. I think the inherent problem with us right now is that all it takes to really shut us down is the ability to run into melee range and snare/root us. Almost anyone can do that, and we suffer because when we're in melee range we're about 9000% less threatening, and almost completely incapable of fighting back. We naturally seek range but have no innate way of re-establishing it (aside from a 41 point talent), and have no nascent way of keeping our opponents away from us to boot (aside from procs). So if that won't change, then our melee capacity needs to.

I generally like the whole deadzone/arcane shot dispel changes in 2.3, I think they'll help those Hunters that are into Arenas actually be able to do them without being as limited to VERY specific group compositions, etc. I think, however, that Blizzard is still dancing around the inherent problem the class has: melee range = gimpgimpgimp and no real way of dealing with that, not even an innate timer (again, without a 41 point talent that very few, if any, people who do Arenas take (because you basically have to be 41 MM to get on a 5v5 Arena team as a Hunter)).

I always thought that an innate class ability (aka non-spec dependent, a trainer skill) that shared a cooldown with Beast Within, and provided the temporary snare/root immunity/removal (BUT NOT the fear/poly, etc. immunity, nor the damage bonus) on a shared (like Shield Wall/Recklessness) 2 min. cooldown would be ok. You'll hear it referred to as the "Cloak of Shadows for snares" on the official forums. The limitation being that if you're 41 BM, you have to choose between Beast Within OR this innate ability, and when you activate one, they BOTH go on cooldown and you cannot activate either until that's done. Meaning it would be impossible for a 41 BM hunter to trigger Beastial Wrath, go snare/root/CC immune for 18 seconds, then pop this timer and go snare/root immune for X amount of time immediately afterwards.

They would have to choose between the extra damage and CC protection of BW for both themselves and their pet, OR the snare/root protection of this timer for themselves and only themselves. I'm confident most would take the former option provided their pets were actually alive to allow them to do so.

Consequently, this would also make Readiness (41 Survival) somewhat better because that would allow you to pop it to then pop this snare/root timer twice in succession once every 5 minutes. (Though I doubt any PvP spec would ever go Survival because the entire spec gets completely raped by Resilience (survival depends almost entirely on crit to really function), and doesn't have any real anti-caster abilities (scatter/silencing/intimidation/big red pet), and only mediocre anti-melee ones (surefooted, deterrence). It's a PvE raid utility spec, after all. So who knows?)

Just a thought, really. I'm still not sure if something like this would be a definitive answer.

PS - Please to let pets (warlock AND hunter) get a portion of the master's resilience, tia.

Aspect of the monkey will save us.

TBH we need an aspect revamp and a stings revamp.

Aspects:

Hawk - AP, chance at xtra shot (think sword spec)
Viper - Mana regen and a defensive protection for our mana pools, Makes drains/burns/stings against us have X% less effect
Monkey - Increase Dodge/Parry chance by X and add an armor modifier
Cheetah - Remove the chance to be dazed and in its place have the hunter take increased dmg when in this aspect. and gain X% stun/snare resistance.1 Think of it like the druid travel form they gain movement but loose their armor.
Aspect switching should also not trigger the GCD, Think stance switching.

Stings:

Serpent - % of dmg done returned to the hunter as health
Viper Sting - % of the mana drained return to the hunter
Scorpid Sting - Reduces the targets chance to hit and increase the hunters chance to hit by 5%
Wyvern Sting - basically the CD just needs to be something realistic on this like 1min.

You do understand that this is nothing more than server side lag and that the melee classes are seeing things quite differently than you are? I can't tell you the number of times I've been running on top of an opponent trying to shiv crippling poison only to be told repeatedly that I'm too far away from my target. Often times I will need to run 2-3 steps in front of my target (on my screen) spamming shiv before it works. I would assume on my opponents screen that it looks like I'm too far away while on my screen it looks like I'm actually running in front of them. It's frustrating to both parties.

Probably part of the reason why there are so many snares etc in this game. Makes the lag less noticeable.

I've never experienced what you described but I have seen instances where on my screen I'm obviously oor of someone and should be able to shoot etc. Its usually pretty close for me. Having to run through someone completely to attack them sounds like you are on the east coast playing on a west coast server or visa versa.

People are always trying to propose a Cheetah aspect without a daze feature. Don't you see how rediculous that would be? Not to mention those others...

I play on a MST server from a state away. Latency is normally ~150. This is something that many melee classes deal with on a normal basis. I'm not complaining about it, I'm just pointing out that the issue isn't a hunter or ranged exclusive issue based on concerns people have about getting crippled from too far away.

Add "50%/100% chance to remove all roots/snares" to Improved Feign Death would be a big help, imo.

Would force BM hunters to completely ignore MM to gain this ability with TBW, and would make SV more attractive in general. Just an idea.

Something...

It makes no sense for our class to have no movment mods and no FF mitigation. Every other class in the game has one or the other.

Yes, I realize this. It does not, however, change the fact that it is extremely difficult for a Hunter to escape melee, even after trinketing a snare with the melee class wing clipped, since the possibility of getting snared/stunned again is very high (especially considering the issue of getting white hit from over 5 yards away, whatever the reason). Essentially, if scatter shot is down when we trinket, we're in big trouble; and if we use both simultaneously, we're down two escape abilites for the next time the melee class enters melee with us (be it via intercept/sprint/vanish/etc.).

Also, I'm not entirely certain your anecdote holds up...I play with roughly 100-200 latency, and I can usually wing clip an opponent running in the opposite direction at 3-4 yards away. Besides, I specifically mentioned I wasn't talking about specials in my post, as they are more finicky regarding melee range than white hitting (which is what I *was* referring to).

Pet survivability is an issue that I think is really important right now, but seems to be getting very little attention since so much noise is being made about other important hunter issues. Pets scaling with owner's resilience would be a start, but I don't think that is enough. Not for hunters, anyway. The functionality of revive pet is a total joke right now. Scrap the imp. revive pet talent, and make revive pet innately be a 5 second cast, a significantly lower mana cost, and have the pet return with at least 75% health, if not more. You could replace the imp revive pet talent with a fel-domination type of cooldown that would allow an instant (or near instant) pet revival as well.

It's just so ridiculous right now how horribly fragile hunter pets are, and once you get that pet dead, it's effectively gone for the rest of the match. If they somehow, someway, manage to cast a 10 second revive pet, it comes back with jack shit for health so it can easily be instantly killed again. That shouldn't be how it is. Oh, and since I guess it does deserve to be mentioned, when in an arena a pet should come back with max happiness added so the pet happiness system does not come into play at all.

Indeed, happiness system is a joke in arenas and the mana cost on 2/2 imp revive pet is still too much for pvp situations.

Perhaps they could improve go for the throat talent a bit. It's in a pretty sweet place.