After finding a decent priest to finally do a bunch of 2v2 today, as well as spending a lot of late-night time in Arathi Basin, I am starting to doubt my stance on the current changes. I went from dismissing them as useless bandaids, to supporting them fully, and now I am leaning towards liking the changes, but not believing they are what we really need to fix the class. MS and Dispell add more options for teams, and I think there needs to be more of each to allow for greater variation. The problem I keep coming back to is the lack of an ability to keep people at range.
1. Warriors and Rogues in general rape Hunters. Should we take a spec to deal specifically with escaping them (Beast Mastery) we lose a lot of our strength in dealing with healers/casters, and since mana burning just about the only viable strategy for a Hunter, this is devastating. I believe a little more depth into the melee vs. hunter situation will illustrate what I believe to be the Hunter's biggest weakness at this time.
Now once upon a time, Hunters could hold their own with melee's. And to be honest, in a 1v1 a Marksman or Survival Hunter still has a very good shot at kiting if they maintain a perfect distance to keep the warrior from Intercepting/Charging or by using cool-downs flawlessly against rogues. Now the problem with this is that the Hunter has to play flawlessly to win, where the warrior and rogue really do not need to. Scatter Shot and Traps are on 30 second timers, while Intercept is on a 15-20 second timer, Wing Clip is about equal to Hamstring for effectiveness, and less effective than Crippling Poison. So you end up with a warrior who can charge in and keep you from moving out of melee range every 15 seconds, while you only have the timers to deal with it every 30, you can pop deterrence once every 5 minutes, or you can keep yourself snare free with BM spec for 18 seconds every 2 minutes. No matter which skill set you take, the warrior will always have some means of getting to you unless you execute perfectly and kill him before it becomes a Timer war (which he will win). For rogues, between sprints, CloS, vanish, stuns, blind, and so forth, he is basically in the same boat with warriors where a good one will rip through a Hunter, unless the hunter can make the kill before the Timer war becomes an issue.
2. Freezing Traps only last for 10 seconds, take 2 seconds to arm, are visible (and one can often tell where it was dropped even if the hunter masks it by moving around), and require someone to physically walk over them. Compare this to all other CC: the few with comparable timers are AE (priest/war fear), and do not have anywhere near the same requirements. Add to this that all other single target CC is essentially spammable so that if someone trinkets out, they can be CC'ed again immediately, and it can be done from 35+ yards away. If someone trinkets or breaks a Frost Trap, the hunter is out of luck until his 30 second timer comes back up. This leaves the Hunter's only truly viable CC option in many cases to be the Frost Trap for its AE snaring effect, which is easily countered and avoidable by most classes (warriors can intercept their way out, casters don't need to worry about it, leaving rogues as the only class really screwed by it). Unfortunately, the snare is not nearly as effective as Hamstring or Crippling poison, so it is easily negated by both rogues and warriors if the hunter attempts to kite them through it.
3. Hunter melee is pathetic. The dead zone change is nice, but people will still be able to charge a hunter, snare him, and leave him without a very good chance to fight back. Partially this deals with poor defense (hunters are at the top of the "most easily killed" list along with Shadow Priests, Fire mages, and Affliction locks), as well as a complete lack of substantial damage dealt at close range. If the dichotomy is supposed to give us weaker melee for greater ranged prowess, then we are fairly broken since our ranged damage is so easily negated (and really not very impressive to begin with). Deterrence is certainly a nice ability to aid with our trouble in dealing with warriors and rogues, but with a 5 minute cooldown, it is hardly anything more than an occasional gimmick. This leads right back into our complete inability to keep enemy players at range given the extensive duration of any timers we may have to keep them there.
Hunters already have a lot of the abilities that we need to deal with what most classes can cripple us with (this is not a war/rogue rant, they just serve as the best example - mages, shaman, and others can do the exact same things to Hunters). What is absolutely destroying our viability is that all of our timers are needlessly long. That certainly is not the only problem, but it is one that really needs to be addressed. I fail to see why traps cannot be moved to 20-25 second cooldowns (and I have no issue with the duration of frost and explosive traps being reduced to 20 seconds as well). I do not understand why Deterrence has a 5 minute cooldown. Beast Within is an excellent talent for getting out of snares and keeping people at range; however, the 2 minute cooldown coupled with the requried utility that a Hunter gives up to gain it is not worth the cost. Viper sting having a 15 second cooldown when the ability itself only takes 8 seconds is also very strange. Scatter shot is the MM Hunter's only answer to most roots/snares, but is on a much longer cooldown than abilities other classes can use to get into melee range. Almost every cooldown a hunter has on his utility spells is far too long to actually be useful. To compound this, our timered abilities do not help a great deal against multiple players (the way Blink or AE fear do), leaving us very weak against a focus fire that most other classes have a means to escape.
Rather than having new abilities added, I would prefer to see blizzard work with what we already have. Surefooted, deterrence, bestial wrath, scatter shot, and traps could all be tinkered with (and even changed entirely in function) to help Hunters where we need it most. I look forward to having added synergy with groups because of an offensive dispell and Mortal strike, but people will still rip us apart unless we get some help with our survivability. The dead zone being gone is the biggest step in the right direction blizzard has taken, but unless they give hunters something more substantial to keep people from charging us and staying in melee range to avoid the majority of our damage/abilities, I don't think much is going to change for us.
If you can 'get to' and 'stay at' range, you've theoretically eliminated any threat any melee class poses to you.
I do believe that Hunters are lacking some basic utility against melee DPS, but an impossible-to-interrupt kite certainly is not the answer.
Hunters would do better to look for a more reliable CC of some fashion - for example, improving the talent Imp. Concussive Shot such that Conc has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of stunning the target for 2s (since a 3s guaranteed stun on a 12s CD might be overkill) might give Hunters a more effective way of maintaining range, when they are able to get to it (which I don't believe is the current problem - as Kaber points out, it's the fact that melee can close distance faster than Hunters can reliably get distance back that is problematic).
I agree about most of the CD, especially trap, being too long. Flight speed of Silencing Shot should also increase (like deadly throw just did); the damage from the shot really ought to go back to 75% as well; the arcane shot damage nerf should also be reverted.
I think letting melee (for the most part) stay in our melee range is not completely unbearable, provided:
1) melee dps output and avoidance are increased (base dodge percentage when naked is too low, for instance; lower deterrence CD would be nice). Hunter melee AP being 2xagi instead of 1x would not be unbalanced either. An instant raptor strike or similar would be nice as well.
2) steady shot gains at least 70%+conc aura interrupt resistance, either from arena set bonus, or talent. That is, the melee can get in your face, but they don't really shut you down unless everybody else gets close/far or LOSes you.
The archer being less of a threat to melee once they close the distance is a sensible mechanic.
Finally, I'd ask that, with the possible exception of aimed shot, all hunter shots that are in range when they begin, not be interrupted by someone moving 1 yard closer in the next .5 sec. Spells already benefit this way when people move OUT of range, so it would be consistent to give hunters' minimum range this benefit as well.
I agree about most of the CD, especially trap, being too long. Flight speed of Silencing Shot should also increase (like deadly throw just did); the damage from the shot really ought to go back to 75% as well; the arcane shot damage nerf should also be reverted.
I think letting melee (for the most part) stay in our melee range is not completely unbearable, provided:
1) melee dps output and avoidance are increased (base dodge percentage when naked is too low, for instance; lower deterrence CD would be nice). Hunter melee AP being 2xagi instead of 1x would not be unbalanced either. An instant raptor strike or similar would be nice as well.
2) steady shot gains at least 70%+conc aura interrupt resistance, either from arena set bonus, or talent. That is, the melee can get in your face, but they don't really shut you down unless everybody else gets close/far or LOSes you.
The archer being less of a threat to melee once they close the distance is a sensible mechanic.
Finally, I'd ask that, with the possible exception of aimed shot, all hunter shots that are in range when they begin, not be interrupted by someone moving 1 yard closer in the next .5 sec. Spells already benefit this way when people move OUT of range, so it would be consistent to give hunters' minimum range this benefit as well.
1. Hunter AP was reduced to 1 AP per point of Agility for The Burning Crusade due to class changes and itemization differences - I doubt they're going back on it now.
2. Raptor Strike being instant would mean that Hunters' melee damage would nearly double (wouldn't interrupt regular melee), which I sincerely doubt is Blizzard's intention for the class.
3. Hunter shots in mid-cast also follow targets that leave maximum range, do they not? Blizzard is just now buffing Hunters such that there is no 'dead' zone - to simultaneously let ranged attacks on targets that happen to move into that melee zone get off would seem to contradict the previous change, since it would invalidate the need to remove the dead zone (to a degree, at any rate).
I do believe that Hunters are lacking some basic utility against melee DPS, but an impossible-to-interrupt kite certainly is not the answer.
Hunters would do better to look for a more reliable CC of some fashion - for example, improving the talent Imp. Concussive Shot such that Conc has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of stunning the target for 2s (since a 3s guaranteed stun on a 12s CD might be overkill) might give Hunters a more effective way of maintaining range, when they are able to get to it (which I don't believe is the current problem - as Kaber points out, it's the fact that melee can close distance faster than Hunters can reliably get distance back that is problematic).
I think concussive shot's daze should be an immobilize, like improved wing clip. This would solve a lot. If we had too many stuns we could really lock down a healer with interrupts from maximum range, which is a little strong.
Originally Posted by Vectivus
If you can 'get to' and 'stay at' range, you've theoretically eliminated any threat any melee class poses to you.
I think melee classes can already get to us and keep us in melee quite easily. I think it should be balanced up, we should be able to keep classes at range for longer, but melee classes should be able to reach us (via intercept, or trained shadowstep or something) and then keep us in melee range.
The issue with melee vs Hunter is as such. If you buff Hunters enough to consistently stay at range against melee classes, then Hunters will maul melee classes. If you don't, then melee classes will maul Hunters (which is the case at the moment, for the most part, if a Hunter doesn't stop charge/flare out the rogue). This isn't an issue for casters vs melee because casters can still do decent damage with melee in range with them, and therefore both participants are doing damage (therefore making the fight "balanced").
I've tried to follow this thread and think of possibilities to help with hunter survivability, but something I continually notice is that beyond our 30 second trap, several of our "survival" skills that non-hunters argue about are also talented skills. Whereas the classes jumping into melee range and focusing/negating a hunter down are using base skills with talents that modify/enhance those skills. 41 pt snare immunity, 21/41 pt interrupts, 6-8+ pt snare immobilizations, 16 pt parry/dodge increase.
It seems more take than give in Hunter survivability/utility where most other classes (without making lists) at least have non-talent escape alternatives or greater use of GCD's to maximize their role in similar situations.
The issue with melee vs Hunter is as such. If you buff Hunters enough to consistently stay at range against melee classes, then Hunters will maul melee classes. If you don't, then melee classes will maul Hunters (which is the case at the moment, for the most part, if a Hunter doesn't stop charge/flare out the rogue). This isn't an issue for casters vs melee because casters can still do decent damage with melee in range with them, and therefore both participants are doing damage (therefore making the fight "balanced").
Well my intension was not to argue only about melee classes. Mages can blink into melee range and frost nova or snare us, allowing them to deal significantly more damage to us than we can to them. Shaman can frost shock, get into melee range, and drop earthbind to keep us there. Warlocks can hit us with Curse of Exhaustion and just jog along in our melee range where we cannot possibly hope to out DPS their DoTs. The list goes on, and without any real means for hunters to keep people at distance we will remain very broken. Wing clip and Concussive shot talents moving to 100% roots would be helpful, but Hunters need a basic, untalented snare-break if we are to remain a kiting class.
How about changing hunter's fear beast to fear anything but breaks on damage? OP I know but could it work with some tweaks? I feel that Concussive barrage is a talent that tries but fails, would increasing the % on that make much of a difference?
Assuming a 2.5 speed weapon after haste, Concussive Barrage will proc about 1.44 times a minute...of pure autoshooting. To get 3 procs a minute, it would need to be a 12.5% chance to proc.
Concussive barrage would need a quite high proc chance to be worth taking as a talent. As warrior's mace spec/stormherald show, such uncontrollable effects are only succesfull if you can reasonably expect it to proc during a fight.
Besides - our problem is getting back to range again when we´re stuck in melee range. Concussive Barrage won´t help awfully much achieving this.
The problem is - as some have already mentioned - while Hunters are utterly useless in melee range, rogues, warriors or feral druids are pretty much screwed at distance too.
So the challange in balancing Hunters for Blizzard is to balance our options to get out of range with theirs to get into our range. At this point from the Hunters point of view it certainly feels like the melees options heavily outweight those of the Hunters. Especially the talented/set bonused 15 sec Warrior intercept feels way too strong.
While 2.3 certainly gives us more utility and I don´t wanna sound ungrateful but I don´t see much of a change with the above mentioned dilemma.
Besides - our problem is getting back to range again when we´re stuck in melee range. Concussive Barrage won´t help awfully much achieving this.
The problem is - as some have already mentioned - while Hunters are utterly useless in melee range, rogues, warriors or feral druids are pretty much screwed at distance too.
So the challange in balancing Hunters for Blizzard is to balance our options to get out of range with theirs to get into our range. At this point from the Hunters point of view it certainly feels like the melees options heavily outweight those of the Hunters. Especially the talented/set bonused 15 sec Warrior intercept feels way too strong.
While 2.3 certainly gives us more utility and I don´t wanna sound ungrateful but I don´t see much of a change with the above mentioned dilemma.
Problem is this...
To balance a Hunter for arena/group combat you have to completely forget 1v1.
We have 2+ people using their abilities to get to us and just our abilities to get away. Currently depending on the class we can barely get away vs just 1 person in a 1v1 scenario, and there is little to no chance to get away from diff combos druid+rogue on you mage + anything on you warrior or rogue + anything on you.
Every class in the game has a disorient, snare,stun, or fear. All of them can be used to get into melee range with a hunter. In a group its like putting the abilities of 1 player vs the abilities of multiple. It doesn't matter you're not going to win.
Nothing short of a movment immunity on a cd will help alleviate that.
How about changing hunter's fear beast to fear anything but breaks on damage? OP I know but could it work with some tweaks? I feel that Concussive barrage is a talent that tries but fails, would increasing the % on that make much of a difference?
At least LOS still counters any hypothetical overpowered hunter snare/root removal (in surviving, not killing the hunter).
But more importantly, why worry about 1v1 power? 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 arena bracket balance is far more important. In any case, I'm pretty sure that most of the healers will become OP in 1v1 with the 1/3 healing=dmg thing.
I remember a WoW (europe I think?) post about snare removal and a nice suggestion that was brought up was Feign Death stripping snares with that improved FD talent in the survival tree, or possibley a chance to; say 25/50%. I was wondering what the serious PvPers (of all classes) would think of such a change.
ie: 30 second cooldown snare removal for all hunters with 17+ points in the SV tree.
IMO, im glad that blizzard is looking at the arena situation for hunters, but i think they are going about it the wrong way.
Its not like hunters dont have good damage, because we do.
Its also not like hunters dont have any utility. Frost trap kiting and viper sting is very useful, because we really dont have to stop doing anything ( other then use a GCD) to use them. The two interupts from marks are very useful as well.
While i do think freezing trap as a cc method is severly lacking compared to abilities like fear or polymorph, i think that we make up for it in other places.
The major problem with hunters in arena, isnt because we lack damage/utiliy/ or even synergy ( not that much)...
The problem is that the strengths we do have, are far too easily shut down through a variety of ways.
First, and most obvious one, is the deadzone, which is being fixed in arena, but we are still useless against anything within melee range, and with all of our "Escape" abilities, being on longer cooldowns then everyone elses " not let that person escape" ( intercept, deadly throw, frost nova, blink... etc) we really cant get back to range, and our stuck trying to melee down warriors, which is obviously not good.
Secondly, LOS, combined with ranged only damage ( melee isnt really enough to finish anyone off), means that we not only have to catch the person thats LoSing us, but once we do catch them and slow them with wingclip which requires us to be in melee range ( we have no guaranteed snares) We have to run back 8 yards out just to get 1-2 shots off before the person runs around the corner of that pillar and we have to go and catch them again.
The third problem, is the fact that we have incredibly low mana pools.
Now i dont necesarily think our mana consumption is a problem, but there still is a massive difference between getting 20 casts out of a 10k mana pool, or 20 casts out of a 5k mana pool ( the latter being much more prone to mana burns)
I have to go now, but when i come back. i'll try and post some possible solutions that i think would play to a hunters strengths, and/or fix our weakness, rather then just giving us recycled and weaker versions of other classes abilities.
I remember a WoW (europe I think?) post about snare removal and a nice suggestion that was brought up was Feign Death stripping snares with that improved FD talent in the survival tree, or possibley a chance to; say 25/50%. I was wondering what the serious PvPers (of all classes) would think of such a change.
ie: 30 second cooldown snare removal for all hunters with 17+ points in the SV tree.
It doesnt change anything.
The largest problem is that the game is now balanced around group PvP. In these groups if there are two people on you, they will STAY on you 99% of the time unless you are BM and have your CD up. Period. Done.
It's no different to the current situation of using a PvP trinket... Often you pop it to try and break the lockdown, but the warrior just spams another hamstring.. or a mace stun goes off... crippling poison procs... the lock casts a fear... the druid roots you etc etc. Snare removal does not help you get back to range in this world of multiple opponents with effects that hamper movement. As levidian said, nothing short of snare IMMUNITY, will prevent it.
I see the tentative balance that needs to exist between making us impossible to catch, and the current situation... but at the moment it's really quite ridiculous.
Having a 50% chance to remove all snares every 30 seconds would be ok but when you have rogue, mage and warrior around you they will snare you again and again. the talent should give snare immunity for two or three seconds to make it worth taking over improved wing clip which many are going to do in 2.3 as the hunter arena gear now actually got hit rating on it.
After finding a decent priest to finally do a bunch of 2v2 today, as well as spending a lot of late-night time in Arathi Basin, I am starting to doubt my stance on the current changes. I went from dismissing them as useless bandaids, to supporting them fully, and now I am leaning towards liking the changes, but not believing they are what we really need to fix the class. MS and Dispell add more options for teams, and I think there needs to be more of each to allow for greater variation. The problem I keep coming back to is the lack of an ability to keep people at range.
1. Warriors and Rogues in general rape Hunters. Should we take a spec to deal specifically with escaping them (Beast Mastery) we lose a lot of our strength in dealing with healers/casters, and since mana burning just about the only viable strategy for a Hunter, this is devastating. I believe a little more depth into the melee vs. hunter situation will illustrate what I believe to be the Hunter's biggest weakness at this time.
Now once upon a time, Hunters could hold their own with melee's. And to be honest, in a 1v1 a Marksman or Survival Hunter still has a very good shot at kiting if they maintain a perfect distance to keep the warrior from Intercepting/Charging or by using cool-downs flawlessly against rogues. Now the problem with this is that the Hunter has to play flawlessly to win, where the warrior and rogue really do not need to. Scatter Shot and Traps are on 30 second timers, while Intercept is on a 15-20 second timer, Wing Clip is about equal to Hamstring for effectiveness, and less effective than Crippling Poison. So you end up with a warrior who can charge in and keep you from moving out of melee range every 15 seconds, while you only have the timers to deal with it every 30, you can pop deterrence once every 5 minutes, or you can keep yourself snare free with BM spec for 18 seconds every 2 minutes. No matter which skill set you take, the warrior will always have some means of getting to you unless you execute perfectly and kill him before it becomes a Timer war (which he will win). For rogues, between sprints, CloS, vanish, stuns, blind, and so forth, he is basically in the same boat with warriors where a good one will rip through a Hunter, unless the hunter can make the kill before the Timer war becomes an issue.
2. Freezing Traps only last for 10 seconds, take 2 seconds to arm, are visible (and one can often tell where it was dropped even if the hunter masks it by moving around), and require someone to physically walk over them. Compare this to all other CC: the few with comparable timers are AE (priest/war fear), and do not have anywhere near the same requirements. Add to this that all other single target CC is essentially spammable so that if someone trinkets out, they can be CC'ed again immediately, and it can be done from 35+ yards away. If someone trinkets or breaks a Frost Trap, the hunter is out of luck until his 30 second timer comes back up. This leaves the Hunter's only truly viable CC option in many cases to be the Frost Trap for its AE snaring effect, which is easily countered and avoidable by most classes (warriors can intercept their way out, casters don't need to worry about it, leaving rogues as the only class really screwed by it). Unfortunately, the snare is not nearly as effective as Hamstring or Crippling poison, so it is easily negated by both rogues and warriors if the hunter attempts to kite them through it.
3. Hunter melee is pathetic. The dead zone change is nice, but people will still be able to charge a hunter, snare him, and leave him without a very good chance to fight back. Partially this deals with poor defense (hunters are at the top of the "most easily killed" list along with Shadow Priests, Fire mages, and Affliction locks), as well as a complete lack of substantial damage dealt at close range. If the dichotomy is supposed to give us weaker melee for greater ranged prowess, then we are fairly broken since our ranged damage is so easily negated (and really not very impressive to begin with). Deterrence is certainly a nice ability to aid with our trouble in dealing with warriors and rogues, but with a 5 minute cooldown, it is hardly anything more than an occasional gimmick. This leads right back into our complete inability to keep enemy players at range given the extensive duration of any timers we may have to keep them there.
Hunters already have a lot of the abilities that we need to deal with what most classes can cripple us with (this is not a war/rogue rant, they just serve as the best example - mages, shaman, and others can do the exact same things to Hunters). What is absolutely destroying our viability is that all of our timers are needlessly long. That certainly is not the only problem, but it is one that really needs to be addressed. I fail to see why traps cannot be moved to 20-25 second cooldowns (and I have no issue with the duration of frost and explosive traps being reduced to 20 seconds as well). I do not understand why Deterrence has a 5 minute cooldown. Beast Within is an excellent talent for getting out of snares and keeping people at range; however, the 2 minute cooldown coupled with the requried utility that a Hunter gives up to gain it is not worth the cost. Viper sting having a 15 second cooldown when the ability itself only takes 8 seconds is also very strange. Scatter shot is the MM Hunter's only answer to most roots/snares, but is on a much longer cooldown than abilities other classes can use to get into melee range. Almost every cooldown a hunter has on his utility spells is far too long to actually be useful. To compound this, our timered abilities do not help a great deal against multiple players (the way Blink or AE fear do), leaving us very weak against a focus fire that most other classes have a means to escape.
Rather than having new abilities added, I would prefer to see blizzard work with what we already have. Surefooted, deterrence, bestial wrath, scatter shot, and traps could all be tinkered with (and even changed entirely in function) to help Hunters where we need it most. I look forward to having added synergy with groups because of an offensive dispell and Mortal strike, but people will still rip us apart unless we get some help with our survivability. The dead zone being gone is the biggest step in the right direction blizzard has taken, but unless they give hunters something more substantial to keep people from charging us and staying in melee range to avoid the majority of our damage/abilities, I don't think much is going to change for us.
Hit the Nail right on the head.
So nice to see someone who actually knows whats going on, and yes I'm looking at you blizzard. =\
I must say, I disagree with alot of the things being said here, and tbh it's starting to feel like the kind of QQ you'd see on the wow forums. Some (dare I say most) of these suggestions are downright overpowered. In addition, the arguments to support them are misleading at times.
For example, claiming it's imbalanced that intercept has 15 sec c/d, while our abilities have 30 sec is just absurd. You listed 1 warrior ability (the only ability they have to reach our melee from a far distance) and 2 hunter abilities (the 2 abilities we have to gain range). Last time I checked 30/2 = 15. It's perfectly balanced, our abilities average at 15 sec as well. Yes, I know our traps can be dispelled, but if they buy you 3-4 secs that's all that you need. You can add a hunter's mark to make it harder to dispell (for paladins only though). Besides, who said we should be able to keep a warrior off our asses always? Scatter buys us range every second intercept, that's a decent balance.
Another bad argument is viper sting "having 15 sec cooldown, while the ability lasts 8 seconds". If they nerfed viper sting's duration to 15 second instead of 8, would that make it better? clearly it wouldn't, and yet you would not be able to use the "c/d vs duration" argument to buff an even weaker version of viper sting than the current one. Therefore there is something wrong with the logic of the argument. Who said the cooldown should last as much as the duration, where is that written? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Some of the things suggested here are downright OP, 100% stun on concussive shots? you do realize it would effectively be a MUCH better version of silencing shot that works on all classes? and it's a first tier talent that any hunter can get. 1agi for 2ap, that's just nonsense. They CHANGED the gear stats to fit the new mechanism, for all practical purposes, you would have exactly the same amount of AP and Crit that you would have if they kept 1agi=2ap and didn't change the gear stat slots. Scare beast giving us a lock fear? come on. FD removing snares and giving snare immunities? How can people be so oblivious to other class' mechanics. Such an ability will completely destroy rogues/warriors/mages, completely. The game is played from the PoV of 9 classes, not just hunters.
And yes, Shamans can frost shock and drop earthbind (kill totem maybe?). Locks can use CoEx (wingclip them?), mages can blink+nova us, boohoo. We can mana drain mages to oblivion. Seriously I think other than locks, hunters are perhaps the worst class a mage can meet, especially after the DZ removal. Saying something like "mage can frost nova us" or "shaman can shock us" is absolutely useless and pointless. A mage could equally say "hunter can mana drain us for 20% of our mana every 15 seconds". Go read other class forums, it sounds exactly the same just from their PoV of things. The key is not how some abilities hurt us (or hurt them), but how things balance out eventually, the bottom line. And yes, hunters are the class with the lowest representation in arenas indeed, which is why we're getting these buffs. If we'll continue to be badly represented, we'll get more buffs come 2.4, but nothing overpowered. These suggestions seem like way too much to me.
Some ideas I thought had merit were:
Increasing speed on silencing shot - this has the advantage of silencing the target sooner (reduces the chance of the spell finishing before the shot hits our target), but the disadvantage of silencing our target sooner than our global cooldown is ready for an additional nuke. So it depends what you're using it for. I tend to think the advantage ourweighs the disadvantage though.
Lower deterrence cooldown - that is very valid and needed imo. And giving deterrence a snare removing or even resistance/immunity could be okay.
Scatter shot should be trainable It wouldn't make BM hunters OP in arena in any way, because that tree sucks for arena (for 5v5 especially, which is the tree blizzard officially care the most about).
Remember though that Arenas are a team game. You keep mentioning other class abilities like it's a 1v1 situation. Like Nac said, "we really cant get back to range, and are stuck trying to melee down warriors", why are you meleeing a warrior? change targets until the warrior in dealt with by your teammates! If you have crippling poisons, your healer should dispell them. If you have hamstring, cyclone that warrior and heal and get range! If a mage novas you, your warrior pummels his nova and you get healed. You get the picture. Everyone's arguments so far have been from a hunter vs many PoV and that's just wrong. Also, if we are focused, the other team is in a big problem because our priest will just mana burn, while we can maintain viper stings and dps (especially since no deadzone in S3).
I must say, I disagree with alot of the things being said here, and tbh it's starting to feel like the kind of QQ you'd see on the wow forums. Some (dare I say most) of these suggestions are downright overpowered. In addition, the arguments to support them are misleading at times.
For example, claiming it's imbalanced that intercept has 15 sec c/d, while our abilities have 30 sec is just absurd. You listed 1 warrior ability (the only ability they have to reach our melee from a far distance) and 2 hunter abilities (the 2 abilities we have to gain range). Last time I checked 30/2 = 15. It's perfectly balanced, our abilities average at 15 sec as well. Yes, I know our traps can be dispelled, but if they buy you 3-4 secs that's all that you need. You can add a hunter's mark to make it harder to dispell (for paladins only though). Besides, who said we should be able to keep a warrior off our asses always? Scatter buys us range every second intercept, that's a decent balance.
Another bad argument is viper sting "having 15 sec cooldown, while the ability lasts 8 seconds". If they nerfed viper sting's duration to 15 second instead of 8, would that make it better? clearly it wouldn't, and yet you would not be able to use the "c/d vs duration" argument to buff an even weaker version of viper sting than the current one. Therefore there is something wrong with the logic of the argument. Who said the cooldown should last as much as the duration, where is that written? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
And yes, Shamans can frost shock and drop earthbind (kill totem maybe?). Locks can use CoEx (wingclip them?), mages can blink+nova us, boohoo. We can mana drain mages to oblivion. Seriously I think other than locks, hunters are perhaps the worst class a mage can meet, especially after the DZ removal. Saying something like "mage can frost nova us" or "shaman can shock us" is absolutely useless and pointless. A mage could equally say "hunter can mana drain us for 20% of our mana every 15 seconds". Go read other class forums, it sounds exactly the same just from their PoV of things. The key is not how some abilities hurt us (or hurt them), but how things balance out eventually, the bottom line. And yes, hunters are the class with the lowest representation in arenas indeed, which is why we're getting these buffs. If we'll continue to be badly represented, we'll get more buffs come 2.4, but nothing overpowered. These suggestions seem like way too much to me.
1) It is often impossible to get out of range of a Warrior with Scatter Shot alone. Even if a Warrior lets hamstring fade to <4 seconds, as soon as he's out of scatter he can piercing howl/intimidating shout you, and he's back in melee when wing clip ends (assuming it hasn't ended already). I will agree you don't need to both trap and scatter a Warrior, though, but it can be hard to get a trap to stick if the warrior isn't disoriented inside of it (and completely wasting a trap cooldown is a good way to get killed). Also, assuming you're referring to arena, any other class' snare during the period the Warrior's intercept is down again messes us up, while Intercept isn't exactly shutdown by anything if the Warrior isn't CCed.
2) Much of the problem I see with Viper Sting having a cooldown is its comparison to the other mana draining abilities. True, Viper Sting has definite advantages over Mana Burn and Mana Drain by being instant, but in a pure drain match (which Hunters seem to be forced more and more into), all you want to be doing is draining anyway. Wouldn't you prefer Mana Drain over Viper Sting? And, sure, maybe the Hunter version is meant to be worse for balancing purposes, but why?
3) "A Mage can Frost Nova us" or "a Shaman can shock us" is not a useless thing to say. Currently, a frost nova with our one trinket break down is devastating; we sit in the ground until it's over with our thumbs up our butts waiting for it to end. Obviously with the deadzone being removed this will improve, but I don't think you can say that it is fine as it is. The other classes that are completely nullified by Frost Nova are Rogues and Warriors, one of which has a plethora of snare breaks (imp sprint, vanish, cloak of shadows when FN's cooldown comes up, trinket).
10/30/07, 11:38 AM
It wouldn't make BM hunters OP in arena in any way, because that tree sucks for arena (for 5v5 especially, which is the tree blizzard officially care the most about).
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