Make it hunter only then, because druids get away easy enough as it is ;x

Crippling poison proc when you're outside melee range of rogue is nice as well.

So you are doing something even while rooted -- mana burning and pushback on a healer. (Which is more than a warrior or enhancement shaman can say.) A 6+ second cooldown doesn't exactly impress me either, since that's what I'm dealing with while I'm rooted/snared.
You'll still be able to outrange us, it will just take a modicum of talent instead of being automatic.
I was drawing a comparison. It was claimed that hunters with a rogue+mage on them are incapable of doing anything (the exact quote: "we can do _nothing_") and I argued (A) that's untrue, (B) there are other classes which can do even less when rooted, (C) or require even fewer players to be locked down.

Unfortunately, this was misconstrued as "Enhancement shaman are weak" which is true but was not my point. I'll back out of this thread now.

Never, though I hear plenty of complaints about vanish :P

I don't think a 4% failure rate of a resist is that huge of a deal in the overall scheme of things if that's all that's involved. I do understand it makes a difference, this is why I put some spell hit on my pvp gear, but I don't think it would make or break you whether it's a self buff or an enemy debuff.

If you want to deal with a high failure rate, try landing a bash on an orc warrior from the front.

Bad example as a faster travel form would let me avoid more damage, saving mana which I would use for healing if I took damage instead. But I get the idea.

The arcane shot change does help in the very specific scenario of attacking someone who has blessing of freedom, but it doesn't help you be fully self sufficient. Right now in 2v2 if you want to partner with a healer you pretty much have to partner with a priest or druid as they can fear/root/cyclone things that get too close to you. I went up against a hunter/paladin team last night and I wondered what they could possibly excel at.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think the best idea is still the reverse blink that we bantered about over a year ago. Something, anything to escape the deadzone for just a moment.

Make it something like a reverse shadowstep. Engineer it such that we "blend into the environment" for a moment, and reappear 8-15yrds behind us, facing forward and cleared of all snares. Just far enough to engineer a greater escape via our other skills, or to regain range when it is most needed. Make it have a reasonably long cooldown (30-45 seconds) and cost a decent amount of mana (500?). If you link it to the global cooldown, and make it interupt autoshot timers it wouldn't be overpowering, just a means of survival.

Also, they should up the dodge/parry granted by deterance, as currently it doesn't deter anybody. It is almost not worth the talent point and the global cooldown required to activate it.

My 2v2 partner is a paladin. We reached 2.2k last week after winning 10-0 against 2.1k teams. I believe we'll max out at 2.3k or so.

It's just a matter of play style. Pala/MMHunter is actually a drain team. That means that against a healer/dps team you don't use multishots on a single target or stuff that you'd normally do when bursting someone down, because you'll just OOM yourself. You can use rank1 multishot though.

Every fight we play against healer/dps we win by draining them. We control the fight from start to end. You said that a druid has roots/cyclone, and while I agree that druid/hunter and priest/hunter are both very good and viable combos, a paladin brings his own advantages to the table: BoF on whoever is snared (including pet). I can't tell you how many times the pally saved my pet from certain death via BoF and BoP. Bubble is huge. And a well timed pally stun + viper sting makes for a very strong combo. I get to use all 3 traps effectively in 2v2 (freezing trap, frost, snakes). I think the issues hunters are concerned about (not being able to get to range) apply mostly to 5v5 and moderately to 3v3. In 2v2 it's less so because you can't get focused by 2/3 people who also have healing support. The worst case is that 2 people are focusing you, but then they don't have a healer.

You would be 100% right there if arenas were a 1v1 issue. This is not the case though. When you are focused by 2 or 3 people, a self buff allows you to get away from ALL of them (intercept, feral charge, blink, vanish/sprint). A spell that is cast on others will do just that: it will only affect that one person. So if you're focused by 2 people, you can only scatter shot one of them. You could wingclip both of them, but that takes twice the time and even then it doesn't help you get out of melee range.

The only ability that buffs us is The Beast Within, and even that doesn't actually get us away from our enemies like intercept/feral charge/blink can do. More importantly, it's a 41 point talent in a tree that is quite worthless in 5v5 for the most part. Unless your 5v5 is really tailored to you doing nothing but pure dps (for example, a 4 dps team with a mage, lock and rogue), BM will not work in 5v5. Even with this 4 dps team setup, the team will be much better off using a SP for his shadow dmg debuff on the focus target, his better burst, his silence ability and the additional AOE fear.

That's like saying a fire mage has a really hard time versus a hunter nuking him. Spec arena if you want do arenas. The point is that hunters lack a spec which makes them viable in arena. MM is simply the least bad option availabe

It's not horrible, but it just doesn't make sense that if the enemy team wishes to completely shut down a hunter, they can do that no problemo, so long as they purge BoF.

I took a scenario that Kaber pointed: warrior and rogue and mage focused on same target. My point is, nobody can escape or retaliate while under pressure by these 3 classes. No, Dire Bear won't save you, especially not the movement impairing part, because you instantly get new spamstring, crippling or a frost snare. Casters can't cast because they're interrupted/stunned/silenced and melee can't do much either. In a 1v1 situation, every class has means of escaping, some classes have it better than others. Hunters have escape utility in all 3 talent trees.
Don't get me wrong, I know hunters need some love in arena, but the issue you're describing is just invalid. You're asking for a way to escape when a hunter is pressured by several enemies. I just pointed that the problem is present among all classes.

Blink, intervene, vanish? Shamans, paladins and druids have high survability so they can LOS the spell casts without worrying too much about physical damage. I could have added priest to that because of their instant protection spells but they lack armor so they are pretty vulnerable. Warlocks? Heh.

I like the idea of changing deterrence to a snare break + 2 or 3 second snare immunity on a 45-60 second cooldown. It is ironic that Druids and Warlocks are posting in (derailing?) this thread telling hunters how all classes have similar difficulty surviving and escaping. Wow. Just.. wow.

Good points and ones I hadn't really considered.

I would still think that priest/hunter would be stronger than paladin/hunter since both can drain in that case. My perspective is naturally skewed since druid/rogue is very strong against paladin/hunter, with being able to neuter your effectiveness with cyclone, and bear form. I can do some of the same against priest/hunter but if I get feared in caster I can get burned for a lot of mana very quickly.

Don't you have significant trouble against teams that can remove freedom though?


As for the self buff vs debuff issue you're right as well, though there are debuffs that affect multiple enemies (frost nova, howl of terror, frost trap). They're more an exception than the rule

Nobody can escape that by themselves no. But a druid can feral charge to get away from it while you have a mage frost nova them or a warlock fear them, or a variety of other options.

A mage that was getting triple targeted can nova and blink or ice block.

Etc etc. Without getting into list wars, most classes have things they can do to get them out of danger.

A hunter has frost trap to prevent the scenario from happening, but once it hits they really only have scatter, intimidation, or wyvern sting to bail them out. They rely heavier on teammates than any other class

According to geekboys, priest/hunter is indeed stronger than paladin/hunter. If you search for 2v2 teams with a hunter in them, priest is the most common one (I did this examination a couple months ago so maybe the results are different now).

Teams that can remove freedom are teams with a priest, a shaman, or a felhunter (till S3 when hunters could purge too! /dance).

Priest combos are pretty easy because they can't remove viper sting. So every 15 secs they get drained for 1800 mana. Maybe every 20 secs cos they LoS alot. That's alot of mana to cope with losing. When they are oom I can even downrank viper sting and keep them oom.

Shaman combos are not even a factor because they are very rare in high rated 2v2. I think the last time I played a shammy was more than 2 months ago. Was shammy/warrior combo. Even if the shammy is quick enough with purging BoF, they can't cleanse freezing trap, so it's very easy for us to control the fight and the shammy is drained pretty fast as long as we destroy the poison cleansing totem (he has scorpid poisons on him so removing it directly is hard, he needs to preemptively remove the scorpid poisons via totem+direct poison cleansing spell, and that's just hard or even impossible with all the damage he takes, the warrior trapped, pally stun etc).

Felhunters I kill on sight always, but you rarely need BoF vs a lock, CoExhaustion is kinda weak as it is. But I kill them anyway cos of spell lock.

You'll be surprised, but druid/rogue is not that hard of a matchup for us. This is because they have no offensive or defensive dispelling, that means BoF will be up for the full duration, and freezing trap buys literally 15 seconds of CC unless trinketed (I have clever traps which prolongs the trap durations). With BoF on me it's easy to keep the rogue snared the whole fight, and since he wears leather I can put alot of pressure on the opposing team by dpsing him. Warrior/druid is actually harder due to the warrior having plate and the druid having bear form, which leaves our team with pretty low damage output, but a few weeks ago we managed to beat a 2.1k warrior/druid with all factors working against us (blade's edge arena, pet dead). The main reasons are that freezing trap works great vs those combos and they can't remove BoF.

The paladin/hunter matchup was the first I've gone up against such a team, but what we did was simply have the rogue go after the paladin. I cycloned the hunter and kept his pet hibernated as much as possible. It takes a while but rogue can definitely kill the paladin.

I imagine in your case you would have the paladin put freedom on himself and run through your frost trap to kite the rogue?

Anyone know if the dispell magic portion of the arcane shot that they're thinking about introducing will dispell a BOP or bubble??

Every dispel removes BoP, so it should. Only mass dispel removes divine shield, so I doubt it.

Yep my paladin uses BoF on himself when he is focused. I snare (concussive/wingclip/frost trap/entrapment) or CC (trap/scatter) whoever is attacking him.

As for me, I usually silence or scatter the cyclones, but some of them hit me ofcourse.

But it's quite hard for a rogue to take down my pala on his own. I am lucky to be with an exceptionally skilled pala, who is also exceptionally geared now (but he wasn't when we started). But if 2 people focus him (like a rogue with help from the druid with feral charge+bash) he won't survive indefinitely unless I assist. Especially dangerous is when a warrior is on him with full rage and the enemy paladin stuns him. But that matchup will be easymode when arcane shot gains the purge effect.

But i'm derailing from the topic which is hunter 2.3 changes. I think the changes should address 5v5 more than 2v2 actually (though they should address all arena brackets to an extent). It's odd, but if you recall, during S1 everyone said that hunters are terrible for 2v2 and 3v3 and are "okay" in 5v5. I think things are different now to a degree. In S2 every 5v5 team was better off with an elemental shaman than with a hunter. When you compare what each class brings to the table, it's not even close. The few teams that use hunters successfully have a team tailored to them (capslockcrew for example with their mana drain combo), but for the most part, when people see a hunter, they know they're gonna kill his pet and focus him and purge his BoF and in 5v5 this is much easier to achieve than in 2v2 or 3v3.

Therefore, I think the additional changes to hunters (and hopefully such changes are incoming!) should address 5v5 more than 2v2 and 3v3 (though 2v2 and 3v3 still require some love ofc ^^). The arcane shot buff is actually a very decent buff for 2v2 and 3v3 as well. In those small arenas people don't have that many buffs and therefore you can dispel crucial buffs alot more reliably. You also have less targets to dispel. Being able to reliably (or pretty reliably) dispel buffs such as fel armor, fort, BoF, BoP etc is definitely a big plus. In 5v5 this is not the case unless you and a priest are doing alot of dispel work at the beginning of the fight. People could have 7 buffs each at the start of a 5v5 match (for example, mage with AI, dampen magic, ice armor, pally blessing, fort, spirit and shadow resistance), if you try to dispel that on your own, and manage to cast arcane shot every 6 seconds, you'll need 42 seconds per person. That's simply too long and you will not be able to reliably dispel things such as BoF or BoP when necessary on your own. If you and the priest dispel together then you could, but then it's the priest doing most of the work anyway! During those 6 seconds he can dispel 8 buffs theoretically while you dispelled only 1 buff.

I'd agree that hunters can perform better in 2v2 and even 3v3 than 5v5. In 5s, there will be simply too much pressure on the hunter (who has no quick escapes or ways to avoid damage), and unless the hunter's team is better geared and/or played than the opposing, that hunter is most likely dead.

In the smaller brackets there is less pressure that can be applied, and the hunter's escape mechanisms work better against fewer opponents. Both 0/30/31 (imp arcane, wyvern) and ye olde 0/42/19 are good all-around specs for these brackets.

I ran some 2v2 for the first time in months with a geared out S2 paladin. I had my current pve spec and a combo of pve and S1 + honor epics. Only game we lost was to a double PoM + Pyro team, when we became complacent and the paladin didn't bother to bubble before healing and was consequently counterspelled.

Then again, there are some combos in 2v2 that you just can do nothing to win. Druid + Warrior with equal gear for example. They go on your pet and the druid is all the time in bear form so I cant sting him/her or do enough damage for him to require to shapeshift out very often. If I dps the warrior he/she will have enough rage to kill my pet because it has no resilience and shit health.

That's one of my pet peeves too. On that note, I think it would be nice for hunters to get equal treatment to melees in the fudge factor that the game grants them.

AFAIK melees get some leeway beyond the base 5-yard range when chasing someone, to compensate for latency(and in all fairness, this is probably necessary). Unfortunately, this doesn't go both ways. I can't count the number of times I've been moving away from someone on my screen, my UI says I have range to fire arcane/concussive/whatever, and yet I'm still getting stabbed by some dagger that's 8 yards away from me, while the game's telling my I'm too close to my target when I try to activate any ranged attacks.

I think changing this would be nice for hunters, largely because while the deadzone is officially 5-8 yards, when you're moving away from someone and accounting for latency it's more like 5 to 10-12 yards, or more if your ISP is performing poorly. I think it's perfectly reasonable for hunters to be given an equivalent "fudge factor" to the melee classes, as being able to use our primary attack skills(ranged skills, 8+ yards) is every bit as vital to us as it is for rogues/warriors to be able to use their melee abilities.

I'd be happy if they did this for hunters. Lost 3 games today to pillar humping resto druids running frikken circles, as a rogue or warrior repeatedly stunned/snared/fucked me in the ass. Multiple times I supposedly had range to scatter/viper the druid, only to be told by the game engine, "I don't like you, so you're not actually in range". This is while some melee is more than 5 yards behind me, and sometimes even hitting me through walls and pillars.

Problem with hunter/healer in 2's is that it basically plays like a sl/sl lock/healer...except worse.

I remember a few weeks ago someone on the US hunter board posted a suggestion for some new hunter abilities in 2.3. He called them "Aim for the ___" the basic rundown of these were...

Aim for the Legs:
0-15yrd range (to keep it from being abused while kiting)
Cripples the target for 3 seconds, and slows movement by 40% for 10 seconds (?)

Aim For the Hands: (arm??)
0-30yrd range
Disarmes the target for 6 seconds
15 sec CD

Aim for the Chest:
Cracks the opponents armor, reducing there total armor value by 25% for 15 seconds
30 sec CD

Aim for the Head:
Dont remember the specifics.. but I think it acted sort of like a 2 second cast aimed shot, with a slightly less dmg ratio and no adverse effects on auto shot.

The first one could act has the melle range root/snare people have been talking about, with the added slwoing effect making it a bit easeir to keep the target at range.

The second could be used more has utility, It would make the priests life a whole lot less painfull when that MS warrior is beating on them with only his tiny fists..

The other two could be used has added damage in addition to more viability via armor reduction. The long cooldowns, range limitations, and moderatly high mana cost (dont remember the exact numbers) would keep them from becoming to overpowered, while still being a usefull addition to our arsenal.