You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. 20% more damage mitigation? No, I don't think so. Try standing behind the hunter while you destroy him and see how awesome dodge and parry is. Or just stun and him say goodbye to both dodge and parry. So what if Hunters are forced onto outlast teams? I don't see your precious little warrior being forced onto only 1 team type. In fact I see him being viable on every single setup except for 1. Don't come here telling us everything is OK or that we're a strong class when it is clear your motive is entirely self-serving and you fear any change that will pull Hunters out of last place. Warlocks work better than Hunters on drain teams we well, so really your point has no merit. The only thing Hunters are capable of destroying are clueless noobs that haven't figured out where their forward key is.

Saying that Hunters have more mitigation and survivability than warlocks merely highlights how ignorant your comments are.

Balanced against who? If I play everything perfect, if I am indeed at the top of my game yes I'm balanced,... against some mediocre warrior.

Wanna tell me again how its fair for one class to be a free 3-400 rating more over another class ?

Until equal skill means equal rewards, then this game is not balanced.

IMO if you take players like hamchook and his priest, and took the level of skill that is required of them, and put that into a resto druid/warrior team. They would wipe the floor with all the current top teams no problem.

Reason being is that it is no question that playing a hunter team in 2v2 immediately puts you at a disadvantage, and yet they still remained top 10. So what happens when you remove that disadvantage?



Please dont try and suggest ANY other non stupid team has it more difficult then ANY team involving a hunter, because statistics prove other wise.

Now this just seems ignorant to me, this game has never been based around big skill differences, i bet you all "top teams" are almost equally good, and he wouldn't "wipe the floor" with everyone if he switched class. Hunters may not be valid with every single class and setup, but they have a few valid setups, and they will improve alot come 2.3.

I'll just give you a small scale comparison Sniddie. This is coming from 3rd highest rated hunter world wide in 3v3 bracket according to geekboys.org (I know rating isnt all in all due to battlegroup population differences)

As a hunter my team has lost many games due to the fact that I havent been able to shoot someone because of deadzone, nor have I been able to silence or interrupt a heal or save to my team mate. Also, the pressure you can put on enemy with DoT damage is just insane compared to hunting someone who's running behind objects and mitigating 100% of my damage.

Now.. As a warlock things would have been A BIT different. Switching a hunter to warlock would have a positive impact in most cases but I agree that "wipe the floor" is too much.

Considering hunters have 20% damage mitigation purely from armor over my perfectly geared warlock, yes it is mitigated, not just sent to a pet (which has to be healed costing mana). I arena on both a warlock and a warrior, and am currently leveling a *gasp* hunter to arena. Both my chars are 2200+ in all brackets on bg9, I think at least participating against hunters in high end would allow me to add my insights to the forums, have you played at the high end with the gear needed to survive against assist trains, or are you just theorycrafting with no real basis for your theories.

Trust me, a hunter running away from a warrior through a frost trap takes significantly less damage than a warlock, and at the very least forces a freedom on the warrior so they cannot use it defensively.


I've seen/talked to Hamchook at WSVG Toronto, and watched every game he played when I wasn't currently in a match. Yes, he shares my sentiments that you have to play perfectly in the lower brackets, and that some classes can make many mistakes and still win, warriors in particular. However, why on earth do you still continue to believe that Blizzard is going to balance classes around the 2v2 arena format, it is still only in the game to allow people to arena while only need to have one buddy online. Yes, hunters could stand to gain a few buffs in 2's and 3's, I'm not denying that in anyway whatsoever, however classes are balanced around 5's, so you can continue to ignore that fact and ask for changes that make hunters largely overpowered in that bracket to be able to play smaller brackets; keep thinking in a vacuum.

WoW BlueTracker: The McRib is overpowered.

I think hunters would shine in the 4v4 bracket if/when it is implemented, more targets to be in line of sight.

Correction: they have ONE valid setup, and even that isnt as common as some setups that are considered not optimal among other classes.

Correction #2: Can you please tell me what changes in 2.3 will make us improve alot?

Last i checked, we are getting a shot that will be nearly impossible to even use, and that we cant even keep up 100% of the time, while it also does far less damage.

We get "scaling" on abilities that we never use now, and will never use later because they require us to give up our mana drains and our only form of cc.

We get a dispel on a shot with a 6 second cooldown, which is fairly good, except 95% of hunters group with a priest anyway, and one extra dispel every 6 seconds wont change much.

And we get a fix on our deadzone. Yes this will help when you have a high latency and will give you a bit more leeway. It will also prevent the small amount of times a mage is allowed to deadzone you uninterrupted, but to say that this one change ( when we still have zero methods of getting melee out of our melee range reliably) isnt going to fix hunters.



Now dont get me wrong, in certain situations these changes may help, but none of them really address the core issues of hunters in arena, and until blizzard actually plays a hunter at 70 competitively in arena ( and yes, they said that), or atleast takes advice from high rated hunters because they know they dont understand the class, we will never truly be fixed.


As an example of some " oversights" regarding hunters.

WoW Forums -> @everyone complaining... Good news!!!

Kalgan: "Yes, we'd be making several changes to aimed shot in the process if we decided to go with that change."

We have about a week till the patch is released, and not even a single word, about any more changes to make aimed shot viable.


Theres also the issue of pet leveling. Everyones experience gains were increased, and pets were.... left in the dust? Surprisingly ( /sarcasm), that doesnt surprise me.


Hell, a while ago, blizzard was even talking about a " free master" ability for hunter pets. IMO this would have helped alot with hunter issues in arena, because being stuck in melee range / lack of mobility, is actually an issue, and this would of helped alot.

As you can guess, this really wasnt followed up on.




Another example, of blizzards complete lack of understanding of hunters is the autoshot -> auto attack mechanic change.

Sure a toggle was added in a month or two later, but this came out of the blue, with no input at all, and the instant it was announced, people already saw it was a bad idea. Having to cancel your auto attack when someone walks into a trap at your feet, isnt impossible, but its one extra thing hunters didnt shouldnt of had to overcome.



What about the nerfs to arcane shot and multishot damage before anyone was even 70?

I completely agree that people running around in gear at level 60, that had that had ap equivalent to high end level 70 blues, against targets that hadnt even had the chance to get the extra health and resilience was overpowered. But it was still nerfed anyway, and now hunters are defenitely feeling it months later.

Why couldnt they wait to see how it would pan out at 70? I guarantee you now, that against people in resilience, there would have been zero problems.





So please excuse my lack of faith in blizzard to actually listen to the thousands of viable hunter suggestions posted in various places that actually address core issues with the class.

These "band-aid" fixes are not what we need, and i just wish other classes would actually realize that none of these changes will help anything.

Sorry for the double post.


Yes i agree that the game cant be balanced purely around 2v2. But thats not saying there is changes that can be made that only affect one bracket or another. IMO, 5v5 balance should be priority, but throwing out the idea of trying to fix a class in 2v2 or 3v3, when it would have no affect in 5v5, is just rediculous.


You also have to realize, that hunters are just as weak, in 5v5, as we are in 2v2, and the problems that cause this all stem from the same core issues with the class. This is why band aid fixes will not work. Whats the point of giving us more shots that we wont be able to use with no mana, while being focus, deadzones, LoSed.. etc.

The rating penalty for hunters only exists at the "scrub" level but not the upper echelon? That claim lacks proof.

2v2 is a completely different meta game than 5v5. In 5's when the mage you were attacking is LoSing your damage, you are in effect CCing him with damage, he isn't sheeping/dpsing your teammates, or you while behind a pillar getting healed by his healers (who are also out of LoS). You are then free to turn to their warrior and attack him, or anyone else in LoS. It is your team's job to position in spots that if they are being attacked, you can attack their attackers.

Yes, you won't be able to finish someone off who runs behind a pillar, however you do have teammates who can, and by running behind the pillar effectively ccing themselves, they are playing directly into a hunter's strength in arena, outlasting.

This is a stark contrast to warrior/healer vs hunter/healer, as their healer can LoS, and the warrior is in melee range much of the fight, you just dont have the support, nor the extra targets to attack in LoS, which is why I understand the weakness of hunters in the smaller brackets. You just require a different mindset in 5's, where the goal isn't always just to burst someone down, it's to limit incoming damage so your team wins the mana war.

WoW Forums -> Additional 2.3 Aimed Shot Change

.5 seconds off Aimed Shot cast time. Even better for winding up during a Cyclone.

Even at 3 seconds its still drastically less damage per time and damage per mana than auto/steady, even not considering the difficulties in getting it off, eg "A shadowfiend is attacking me? Oh well, I guess no more aimed shot".

Still needs work imo. Not to mention the whole idea of increasing our arena effectiveness by making one of our talents marginally, is 100% the opposite direction they're going with every other class. For instance they're giving mages ice block as a trained ability because they felt forced to spec in to it... admittedly aimed shot is only 11 points, but if they're so hell bent on us having it, why not make that trained too ?

If they made Scatter and Aimed trained abilities, removed the cast time from Wyvern Sting (and lowered its cooldown to something reasonable like ~45 seconds), at this point, I'd be happy with that. That and getting my old, undelayed traps (that you can still cast in combat, thank-you-very-much) would be more than I think most of us would expect at this point.

I think people need to be prepared for the idea that the most glaring flaws with the hunter class will not be addressed during the lifecycle of this game. They aren't going to address Steady Shot. They aren't going to revisit the fact that we use mana. They aren't going to change our class attribute statistic modifiers. As I've often said, the hunter class will remain the only unfinished class in the game for the as long as people are playing WoW.

Consider all of the changes they've implemented thus far for 2.3 alone - removing the deadzone, adding a dispel effect to Arcane Shot, having pets auto-move to be behind targets, etc. and just how big of a deal it is in terms of "pure gameplay mechanics". You're giving a class that did not have a dispel the ability to cast it with a quasi-instant (travel time) that is on an extremely short cooldown. You're allowing that same class to spec into an ability which gives them a healing debuff. And you're effectively adding more than 18 square game-yards of attack range where there previously was NONE.

This is how other classes see it. This is why they're whining so much.

But for those of us who really understand this class, we know that at the end of the day, it's really not all that much. It SOUNDS like a lot, but it's: a) not what we need, b) not going to add much in terms of end results. Whiners love to use the "band-aid on a <insert fatal wound to interesting body part here>" analogy. The truth is, it is more like invading Canada when you need to find a cure for cancer. Yeah, it's great, because hey, who doesn't want to invade Canada? But it's not going to help you cure cancer.

OK, I suck at analogies, but you guys get the point.

In my opinion, Hunters in Battlegrounds got a huge buff whereas Arena Hunters, not so much.

Hunters and Warlocks are truely exact opposites in the sense that one class has an insane Damage uptime %, and the other has a horribly abusable Damage uptime.

No amount of arguing will ever negate the fact that ONE TICK of a single Warlock DoT does more damage than an Arcane/Steady/Auto shot.

Now factor in the 100% damage uptime of Warlocks, compared to the ~10-30% damage uptime of a Hunter in a 2300 rated 2v2 team.

And people are still confused on why Hunters are so under-represented in 2v2 and 3v3?

One thing: Aimed shot was never really 3.5 as it was affected by quiver (it was 3.04), now aimed shot isn't really 3.0, it will be 2.6.

There's little way you could achieve a balance between haste gear and survivability (resilience + stamina) gear that would make Aimed shot fast enough to use constantly. Not impossible, of course, but it would actually force us into pretty much one standard set of gear (the ZA chest, the 2 rogue leathers and BT/MH raid gear, maybe a Dragonpine/Abacus, both of which are too situational to rely on).
Serpent's Swiftness is way too deep in a tree that's not very popular for arenas, as well...

I'm completely with you, that in most cases it would not be optimal to stack such high amounts of haste, but at least it gives BM a little bit more viability.

If you use Abacus (24,7%), Rapid Fire (40%) Serpents Swiftness (20 %) and quiver (15%) that would bring Aimed to:

3/(1,247*1,4*1,2*1,15)=1,245 seconds cast time, right?

Probably a viable solution to quickly burst someone down, without forcing you to forego too much PvP gear?

edit spelling

I run a 2v2 with a paladin, and I can say with absolute certainty that 250 resilience is enough for me. Due to lack of access to PvE gear I play with 340 resilience in practice, but it is definitely overkill and if I had the access to it I would use more pve gear.

This is even more obvious when playing with a priest, as they will be the focus target alot more often than a paladin is. A hunter in 2v2 doesn't need high amounts of resilience, and is better off getting more dps gems and haste items.

In high rated 2v2 you'll normally face healer+dps, and occassionally 2xdps.

Against healer+dps resilience is needed much less because you only mitigate 1 person's dps with it. It other words, the relative value of resilience decreases in comparison to 5v5, where it would mitigate multiple opponents. However, the value of dps stats remains the same.

Against 2x dps I find that they more often than not (alot more often) focus the healer and not myself. In such a scenario it is actually VITAL to have high dps (to take someone out before your healer is dead), and clearly the resilience is absolutely wasted if you're not focused.

I was thinking of getting Zul'Aman haste items for 2v2 long before the MS effect was announced, simply for the dps boost. Now with the MS effect, it's even more paramount.

I agree that in 5v5 it will be harder to balance haste with survivability items. However I think DST will be a fantastic 5v5 trinket now (possibly). Other classes also use their own 'haste proc' trinkets similar to DST. Druids use the healing version to cast fast cyclones (for example, Hafu's 2v3 rated arena video), priests use the same version to cast fast mana burns. Mages use the trinket from SP to cast arcane missles at lightning speed (check Shivan 6 or Saqe 3 videos), and locks can also use it for faster casting fears/howl of terrors. For classes like paladin/shaman those procs are excellent simply because all their heals have a cast time. I guess it's time we joined the club of players who adapt their game around powerful trinket procs.

By the way, those trinkets are blues and proc less than DST (I think). DST is a really higher class trinket and it can proc out of almost any ability we use (wingclip spam till a proc! ^^).

Now to get a DST...

Taking half a second off the cast time of aimed shot is a pretty big deal. It now takes about the same time to cast as frostbolt.

If you've ever played a caster like mage, druid, or priest, and you go with and without the talent that takes .5 off of a spell you know how huge of a difference it really makes in practice

Does anyone else see the very real possibility of retardedly effective all ranged 4dps teams in the future?

With serpent swiftness, bloodlust, and rapid fire, the cast time will be trivial. Being completely ranged you can easily switch between targets to burst down, and arcane shot can be used to nearly instantly remove blessing of protection as soon as it's applied (assuming your shaman has had time to purge earlier in the match).

I'm not saying such a team would be unbeatable but I could see it being effective

Keep in mind that by getting Serpent's Swiftness you're sacrificing Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot, that, used properly are 2 healing interrupts, for the possibility of a faster application of a -50% healing debuff.

BEEF: Yes and no. Yes, as 0.5 seconds do mean a lot, but a 2.5 or a 2.0 second cast spell is still too slow to use on a melee target heading towards a hunter, and again, too slow to use on a ranged target while being clobbered by melee. Overall, i think I'll have to actually bring my hunter to arenas next season, to see how big that change is.

Tammy: No offense, but spamming Wing Clip to get a haste proc for Aimed Shot (or Steady Shot, for that matter) is worse than casting a slower Aimed Shot in the first place. Also, keep in mind DST now has an internal cooldown, so using up the proc on a Wing Clip early on pretty much insures you won't get a proc 20 seconds later, when you get to a safe range.