I think if survival is viable for something, it will be for team setups where the hunter is likely going to be the focus target (pally/warrior/hunter 3v3 for example). It might also be decent for setups where the hunter's control abilities are really needed.

Gimping your shots sucks, especially multishot. You do gain some nice buffs however, in particular 3% crit and resourcefulness, this talent is really really awesome.

For the most part though, i'd rather be MM and have Silencing Shot, 10% AP, RWS, Careful Aim, Barrage/Improved Barrage. Survival tree just doesn't bring enough to the table as it stands now. If they improved counterattack (maybe have it proc on dodges too), made improved FD have an additional PvP related bonus and improved our 36-41 talents, then we'd be talking

Readiness is horrible btw, the only way survival would be viable is if it still kept scatter shot. Something like 0/26/35 (26 in MM for improved stings + all the other mandatory 21 MM points), even then it's a longshot imho.

Not a big poster, but thought i'd add by expriences with the 2.3 changes as i come from a slightly different area than most posting it seems..

namely, i'm a pve hunter through and through, and have taken up the hunter (replacing my warrior) since 2.3 in my 5v5 team.... using a 0/43/18 spec for imp traps

whats makes this different is a few simple things:

i have 1 resi item (the medallion) so 20resilience
i have ~2600 -> 2900 rap in 5v5 (depending on BoM) due to pve gear (also means 10k hp)
i only do 5v5, and normally with a warrior, so am basically drawing a direct comparison to the effect this has had on our 5v5 team, which previously ran with 2 MS warriors..

and we normally hover around 1700-1750 points in 5v5 (or did)

Traps:
as expected, waste of time.

arcane shot:
this has made the king of all kiting techniques, namely frost trap (with full entrapment and clever traps) and run in circles... why? because i can get rid of the pesky BoF when it invariably comes, and the deadzone changes just buff this further..

i'm not saying this is some gamebreaking change by far, but i tend to play a role in the group most easily described as "chicken bait"... i don't like to, and where possible i try and hide and get a chance to dps and drain... but all too often the hunter is the target of choice, for all the reasons mentioned in this post previously, we're just that bit easier to lockdown than others..

it does also open up the opportunity to have a warrior and a rogue helplessly chasing you in circles over a frost trap, and to have direct control over keeping them in there via dispelling BoF... added to the deadzone changes meaning you can still effectively slow and drain while doing so...

now i'm sure there's hundreds of teams more than capable of overcoming this (hence our ranking of 1700~), but thats becoming steadily more difficult..

stings buff:
again, waste of time... though given i have imp stings anyway for viper sting, the serpent does at least do some reasonable dmg in the highly rare situation where you wanna use it

aimed:
IF they arn't paying you any attention
AND you have the time to cast it without any los/range stuff
AND your team is ready to nuke whichever target
it has a purpose

gonna replace a warrior's MS? dream on..

deadzone:

yes, it's nice.
no, it does not stop the one thing that cripples us, the sheer lack of abilities to escape the melee gank... if we could cast ranged skills actually IN melee range, MAYBE it would help.. but even then, this is a playstyle change, and no more... we still have a deadzone, we still get locked down easy... this just means i gotta re-learn how close i can stand and still dps... and since when did hunters want to be CLOSE to thier target?

finally, a tiny note about my gear..

yes, in theory it sucks... i die a hell of a lot easier than most, due to getting critted hard, and not having much in the way of hp...

however, i can fulfill a burst dps role in the group... i will happily deal out 4-6k in 2 instants and an auto on anything other than a highly armoured target... i know again this is effected by the rating we have, not fighting the most diffcult or best geared of opponents... but hunters can when needed fill the burst dps position, even if not so well as others..

it's just not possible with the bad thought out stats on the hunter pvp gear (see someone's previous post about stats etc)

so yeah.... my OPINION (important this bit, opinion means it's what i think, not actual 100% indesputable fact... so no stupid "omg thats just not true" posts plz, it's as true as an opinion can be) on the new changes... they make a difference, but in the end it's a playstyle change and little else, just hand over that reverse blink and we'll all be happy

Edit: forgot to mention, i respec from pve BM for arena 2-3 times a week, so my pvp spec changes a fair bit, the gear on armoury will almost certainly be the gear i wear for pvp.. and in comparison to my warrior, it brings something extra to the group without loosing much... but thats only because we normall run with 2 warriors, so we dont' exactly loose anything.

Gday peoples,

This is my first post (and view) in the PvP section of these forums, so I'm not too sure if this is helpful or known already or what-not... I just want to tell people about a really fun hunter 2v2 combo! This seems like a good place to put it.

Last night me and an Elemental Shaman were bored, so we started playing 2v2 arena. I've only ever done about 6 weeks of arena: 3 weeks of 5v5 when it first started, got shoulders/gloves of season 1 and stopped, then holy priest / hunter a few weeks ago for some points for a weapon. So I'm not all that experienced when it comes to arena, but this combo felt really fun, and was pretty successful for 'grab a few arena points on Monday night' team.

We got to 1950ish before we lost a game, simply from nuking the hell out of one target. For some teams, the shaman nuked/interrupted the healer while I nuked/stunned the other class, with a NS chain lightning to help finish off the target I was killing. Most the time we just put so much pressure on the team.. they snapped. Up until around the 1900s mark, we would kill the first target within around 5 or so seconds for a 2dps team, or 5 to ~20 seconds for a 1healer 1dps team. It was hilarious watching a Soul Link Warlock die in around 10 seconds with a resto druid spamming heals on him, or a warrior charge us, get Intimidated and die before the stun ended.

However there was a couple combos we had some trouble with. A druid/warrior team (which we had previously killed the warrior a few seconds after he charged) gave us some trouble. They were very smart with LoS, spell reflect, positioning, managing our own cooldowns defensively, staying alive, etc. We had a few close games, but they killed us the last 3 games we had out of 6 total. Rogue/Disc priest was also tough, they killed us twice, but they certainly weren't as tough as the druid/warrior.

This wouldn't of been possible without the deadzone changes, as most the damage I do was from within the old deadzone.


Anyway, long story short, I recommend any PvE geared BM specced hunter who wants to have a bit of laugh in 2v2s to grab an elemental shaman friend and go PEW PEW some teams!

Oh and some extra info: the shaman had full season2 gear (an experienced arena player in 5's) and I assume he was PvP elemental spec. I'm raiding gear and pve BM spec. We hit a bit over 2k before loosing a couple to the druid/warrior and called it a night.

I vaguely recall playing against ele shaman / hunter as warrior / pally. The hardest thing was trying to decide which target to hit first, since ignoring either one allows them to output some serious damage.

Still, the problem is that you have no real CC, so I would expect teams to be able to beat you purely by playing defensively and gradually wearing you down (which is what happened, from the sound of it), forcing the shaman to start healing and then gibbing one of you.

Although as you said, for fun it sounds like an awesome combo. A friend of mine has recently been lamenting the fact that he's quite useless in 2s as an ele shaman, I might tell him to go find a hunter friend!

Yeah that's pretty much what happened. My shaman mate said our combo would definitely hit a rating plateau when we start to verse teams that can adapt and quickly understand out weakness. Even if all we get is 2k, I'm happy. I'll just grab a pair of shoulders to strut around in Shat with... and also to use in arena to hide the fact that I'm in full PvE gear. Then again I probably wouldnt arena again until well after Sunwell is on farm.

I've noticed myself missing a fair amount in PvP recently. I've stripped off a lot of hit rating from upgrades to PvP gear, but I still have about 60 HR (~4% hit) and 2 points in Surefooted (2% hit). I shouldn't be missing against equal level targets. I realize there are some abilities out there that increase miss chance (Insect Swarm and Scorpid Sting off the top of my head), but I've even seen myself miss against Mages which don't have any -hit abilities that I know of. What else could be causing this? And should I be running more +hit to prevent these occurrences?

A lot of 2's combo's can work, pretty much anything and everything up to a certain point. The definition of that point is determined by many factors, such as the presence (or lack of) of the powerhouse 2's class (Warrior, Druid, Rogue, Warlock), on either side.

Heres the problem with combo's such as the one you mentioned: They will work until you come up against higher rated teams with combo's that DO work well (see Powerhouse 2's classes). And then they will really not work at all. If the weird and crazy combo your using has absolutely no high-rated representation by now, its statistically not a good combo. (This only applies to 2's).

In regards to your combination specifically, you will have trouble against teams who understand LoS. Your team is very burst-reliant, and that is a no-go in 2's without the presence of a Rogue (to keep the target stationary). Line of sight counters Burst, and your combo really has no way of stopping a team from using poles to buy time for a heal.

That explains a lot, as I noticed a fair number of misses on mages in particular. It's probably not worth stacking hit to mitigate this, although it sucks missing a Scatter Shot against a poly-casting mage. Thanks for the info.

I understand that Wolfslaying Sniper is the best raiding weapon for BM hunters but I am curious to know if the Merc Glad and Veng Glad weapons will be better for PVP? I dont often use steady shot in arenas or BGs so Im thinking I should probably save up for the bow instead of buying veng glad armor.

Another thing i would like to consider too is maybe i should try to get into a ZA group for the Tuskbreaker and stack some haste rating gear to bring its speed down to the optimal level.

Simply put what will be the best PvP weapon/set-up for BM?

The advantage of fast weapons for BM in pve has to do with steady shot, and since you aren't using steady shot frequently in arena's as you mentioned the best weapon generaly would be slow hard hitting, so yes Merc/Veng Glad weapons are your best bet.

I might be talking out of frustration right now but I'm heavily disappointed in Hunters so far this season. The changes have all but faded as other classes gain core strength, and Hunters feel just as gimped as ever.

Any other Hunters feeling as frustrated with the class as I am so far?

The changes really powered hunters up for teams they already do well on, but did not provide us anything for non-drain teams. I still do not think these changes were the correct way to go about addressing hunter issues. The only one that was right on the money was the Dead Zone change. Aside from that we need all of our timers assessed (and subsequently reduced) and some sort of a snare break to get to range because Bestial Wrath is just lackluster for anything beyond a duel.

I mean I agree we have gone up a notch, obvious with the deadzone bug fix (yes, I called it a bug fix), and thats nice for teams that we could already beat, as well as sub 2100 teams, but it is still ridiculously easy to abuse our short-comings, and again, one of our core unique lolability (Viper Sting ) is only effective against two classes, both of which we never needed help against.

In short, the three core arena DPS classes (WWD, Aka Warrior Warlock Rogue) still kick the crap out of us, and come s3 weapons, will continue to do so more efficiently. Well, thats what i've noticed so far, and since I've leveled 6 classes up to 2300+ in 2v2 and 3v3 i'm quite confident in the accuracy of what i've said.

I would very much like to hear the opinions of top US/EU hunters on this one, so if you guys are reading please share your thoughts so far.

A few relevent observations i've made/seen so far:
- There are shitloads of hunters at the low to mid bracket in s3.
- I have yet to see a Hunter apart from myself in the 1850+ s3 3's bracket.
- Any team that has a anti-viper sting combination of classes (Warlock, rogue, warrior, druid, shaman, paladin) and are half decent beats a team with a Hunter in it.
- Gladiator titled players generally know how to abuse Hunter shortcomings, and providing its not a PRM combo, will defeat us quite easily.
- Hunters rock against PRM (thanks to vulnerability of Mages and Priests to Viper Sting).

I think we've gained a bit via the deadzone removal and arcane shot buff, but I still expect to see hunters as the most under represented class in 2v2 and 3v3. I say this for two reasons: (1) LOS still hurts us badly, (2) players still think we stink, so it is hard to get onto teams with serious PVPers (that's my experience anyway- friends would chuckle when I suggested adding Tsohg to their 5v5 team, and this was when I had an 1800+ 2v2 rating). Player psychology and group-think has a big effect on WoW PVP.

I have a warrior now who just recently completed Deep Thunder, I find it more satisfying to play him in the arena. Losses don't tend to make me want to throw my monitor through the window as much, for some reason.

Pardon my 3v3 rating but we only played 21 games on the first night and our warrior has ever since had high latency during prime time so we kind of havent bothered for a while.

Without the ban for our priest we would have been competing for rank one and two in EU Misery. Our only anti-lineup was the team that won merciless title. They played lock+druid+war earlier in the season and we complitely farmed them. Then they found out what our weakness is and switched lock to a rogue.

I play hunter, war, disc/holy priest and our only real problem right now are double physical dps teams that go for our priest. Usually it's done with a druid so our warrior just cannot put pressure on anyone enough. Two stings, frost trap, timed scatter shot and wing clips to proc immobilize just arent enough of a help. I can't hurt the druid enough due to LOS problems.

Generally I think we still lack something to get away from rogues and warriors every now and then.Rogues out-cooldown us by far. Warriors have 15 second intercept.

Not to sound too elitist even though this is elitistjerks I will say that hunters can be on the top but it just requires you to play so solid. One mistake and you're fucked for 30 seconds is something that annoys me a lot. No other class has to deal with such things as traps.

It is true that we need some kind of help vs warriors/rogues, specifically warriors with their low CD on intercept and ability to intercept out of frost traps.

I'd like to see a hamstring nerf to be honest, or more hamstring resists. Hunters just don't have an answer to it.

On the bright side, I've just started playing on a 2 healer 3 dps team, lock/rogue/hunter/pally/shaman. We focus on cc:ing/pressuring the dps, very seldom training healers. I pick a caster, usually a mage, and just reduce him to a healing-sponge.

Also, draining dps mana seems much more effective than draining healers because dispells come slower. Since hunters are ranged they also can't be kited; CoE, priest fear, Blink, a ranged class isn't so much affected by those abilities. Damage will be pretty much constant until the caster goes LOS which also reduces their ability to dps.

Anyway, as any hunter I have problems with rogue/warriors. It seems there isn't much I can do if the warrior decides I'm 'IT'.

What I think hunters need is a melee-only disarm ability. We need some way to survive being crippled/hamstringed and disarm could be it. I guess counterattack was initially designed to solve this problem, but it is a very strange ability that just doesn't work very well.

Hunters are also slightly overpowered vs casters, so I think they should tone down arcane shot and make the dispell much less effective, or just remove the dispell portion. Hunters didn't need it to begin with.

Armory: Trohck
Armory: Monco

I agree there are still a lot of shortcomings and I fully expect hunters to continue to be the worst represented class in all brackets.

My thoughts:
- Pets are too fragile yet are essential to a major strategy which is winning through drain. Hunter pets are in many cases more fragile than warlock pets and more difficult to resummon.
- LoS (aka pillar humping) is still crippling, even with the deadzone changes. I'm not saying that this needs to change but benefits need to offset it (some kind of mobility).
- Traps are very difficult to use and weak compared to all other cc's.
- Wyvern sting still sucks. Needs a shorter cooldown or something.

The last patch lowered hamstrings duration from 15 seconds to 10, which is huge. One of the biggest changes of the patch, yet somehow often gets forgotten.

I am also above 1850 quite easily. Had 1940 already this season. In S2 we had 2.4k as rogue/druid/hunter.

I agree with you Xavias, even if several hunters will excel (like they did in S2), hunters as a class are gimped and I am very disappointed with that. I think several more changes need to take place for us to be truly viable:

1) Viper sting = change to physical effect (this will solve the lolscorpidonly issue as well) or increase improved stings effect by alot (increasing it to 100% will solve the lolscorpidonly issue for MM hunters, which is the pvp spec atm, but even 80% is decent, though you'll still use a scorpid in this case).
2) Pet survivability = fix this ASAP.
3) 4/5 bonus = change it to something useful, such as reduce c/d on viper sting or on traps.
4) Possibly a CloS of some sort for snares (I believe this will help the average hunter alot more than it will help the pro hunters - but it seems to be what everyone want and i'm sure there's a good reason).

Edit - reached 2005 today after going 12-2 as druid/lock/hunter, went from 1867 to 2005 while beating our battlegroup's merciless gladiators 5-2. We had to stop because our druid had rl aggro.

Here's what Goku (also a 2.4k 3v3 hunter in S2) had to say about hunters this season:

" Hunter+Druid vs Warr+druid= 90% for hunter+druid ( eventually fight will never end, but u cant lose).
**** vs Warr+Pala= 70% for hunter+druid ( Druid might die because of JoJ but you have scattershot / freezing trap+huntersmark / wingclip / dispell bof with arcane shot.)
*********** vs Lock+Pala= 70% for hunter+druid ( Your pet might die because of all dots etc)
etc etc

Only REAL 'counter' is Warlock+Rogue.

3v3, Hunter Mage Priest -> Again no real counter ( except the team below with a hunter).
Warlock Hunter Druid -> No real counter either

5v5 Hunter Warlock/Mage Priest Warrior Paladin -> No real counter either."

While I disagree that there is no real counter to these combos, I agree that if there are valid combos for hunters, these are it. Lock/Hunter/Druid is absolutely excellent (and fun!) in particular because of the new aimed shot, it's a very good addition for this combo. Rogue/Hunter/Druid seems a bit weaker this season imo, but it can still work. I never tried Hunter/Mage/Priest but I imagine it can be quite powerful due to CC chains being quite plausible (mage sheeps, they trinket, resheep, sheep, scatter, trap, aoe fear, sheep etc...), all the while the hunter and priest are draining and the priest can even Mind Control when the hunter and mage are zeroing in on a kill. You could easily have a situation with one of your opponents CC'ed, the other nova'ed and nuked, and the healer mind controled.

However, the class still requires significantly more skill to play and therefore will lower the average rating of hunters. There will always be several hunters who excel and achieve excellent results, however the CLASS as a whole is flawed because it requires more skill to play and one can only assume that skill distribution is equal among all classes (as evident by many people who rerolled classes and had much better results).

Edit 2 - here's an excellent counter to Hunter/Lock/Druid - Shaman/Undead Rogue/Undead Lock. Though not a very common combo, we met this team and found it very very difficult to do anything. They just go for the druid and the shaman spam purges the hots. Normally when there's a rogue on our druid we fear/wingclip it, however this rogue is immune to fear and can remove 4 wingclips (2xsprint + 2xvanish), it is almost impossible for me to maintain snares on the rogue because I am feared as well by their lock (who is also fear immune). All their shaman has to do is make sure to rank1 earth shock our fears incase they try to fear him and it's gg.

This is why we have a rogue in the team, with our rogue on their lock, he won't get a single fear off (as long as i'm ready with silencing shot the moment he deathcoils our rogue). Without the lock fearing me, I can keep the rogue snared and pop flares when he vanishes and the fight becomes alot easier once the druid gains range and starts his cyclones/roots.

The 15 to 10 seconds is obviously a big reduction, but I see it more as a nerf to keeping several players hamstringed simultaneously. It doesn't much affect a hunter trying to escape a warrior since it can easily be reapplied within those 10 seconds.

Wingclip can also be reapplied without cd, and I wouldn't have a problem giving wingclip something like a 15 sec cd. Hunters can just follow someone in melee and keep them constantly wingclipped by spamming it, I don't think that was intended.

Lets not beat a dead horse though.

Hamstring is a part of the game, but no: I don't think it involves any "skill" on the warrior part to keep a hunter snared, and no amount of "skill" on the hunter part will get him out of melee once snared.

I have three ways to stop a spell being cast at me, but when I'm hamstringed by a warrior I can only spam wingclip and hope for a talented frost trap proc.

Ok enough QQ I can accept when I'm being outplayed but I'd like to see some variety of choice here, for both parties.

With a 10 second hamstring, an unfocused warrior is going to have a hell of a time keeping MS and hamstring on a target at the same time against any target with decent AC, or one that is being shielded. That nerf was huge.

I wonder how much of a requisite is Stoneform for an hunter?