Actually I find BEM to be one of the worst possible arenas to play in as a Hunter. You cannot shoot to the top of the ramps from the bottom, or vice-versa because of the Dead Zone and Line of Sight. The pillars on top of the ramps cut into LoS, the small lip on the sides of the bridge break LoS, on the ground the pilars can also be used for LoS, the jail can be used to keep pets from following properly, and so forth. When I go up against a hunter in that arena I get excited, because it is the easiest arena to shut them down in. If all you do is stand in the middle of the bridge and let the opposing hunter fire away, then yes it can be quite favorable for the hunter, but I find even at 1500 people that let you do that are few and far between.

I'm getting the general impression that the hunter changes really are too little too late. While the change to arcane shot is, indeed, nice, it's not making me want to play my hunter again. At this point I'm beginning to think that the constant band-aids being thrown on our class has distorted the play style so much that nothing but a total overhaul of hunter dynamics will make the class worthwhile in PVP.

On hunter damage: hunters do respectable, sustained dps-- when we are able to stand still, develop a complicated shot rotation macro, and when our pets aren't a liability due to chaining damage (the AOE avoidance buff is pretty great, however, only marginal complaints there that may have overreaching consequences on game balance). That's great for PvE. Hunters are a respectable, worthwhile class to play in pve. Perhaps not the best, but they're a safe bet and they can hold their own in a raid/pve environment.

Unfortunately, the dynamics that make us viable in pve make us entirely lackluster in pvp. Sustained dps is far easier to heal through than spike damage. Forcing us to stand still to auto attack throws sustained dps out the window.

On CC: Traps COULD be an excellent form of CC, but the nerfs they've experienced have greatly reduced their utility in pvp-- at this point our CC utility is third to last only to shamans and paladins. Even druids provide a better pvp CC, and as far as I know hybrid classes originally weren't supposed to receive CC abilities of that kind (it's just something I've heard and I can not provide a source for this, so take it with the appropriate grain of salt).

I'm not going to address the dead zone, because I'm not interested in beating a dead horse. Nor will I address LOS, because I think LOS is a baseless complaint-- EVERYONE can use and abuse LOS, hunters included.

To address these issues, Blizzard gives hunters a 41 yard purge, and removed the cast time of a talent-based sleep ability with a 2 minute cool down. They also increased the damage output on DoTs by 10% of our attack power, which still does not increase the utility of those abilities sufficiently to waste a trap cool down or placement in a shot rotation. Essentially, they buffed the abilities no one in their right minds would actually use regardless of the small bones being thrown at them to draw attention away from the glaring disappointment they've made of this class.

I've said for a long time that I think one of the most important skills hunters need for PVP is just some kind of snare escape. Make it an 11 point talent in Survival or something - just a snare break and brief immunity. That would at least give a hunter the ability to wing clip someone and get away momentarily before hamstring/crippling poison can be re-applied. What I would give to be a gnome hunter...

I'm looking forward to playing with the new Arcane Purge. Since rank6 has dispel, it will be fairly cheap to cast (122 mana with efficiency) and decently effective in 2s and 3s since there are not as many garbage buffs.

Instant wyvern makes it a bit better, however if I do go WS imp stings is pretty much mandatory to somewhat support this costly 31p cc. So I'd probably end up playing something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with a choice of barrage/stamina/trap cooldown/etc. This build plays mostly like a MM build only it trades a bunch of ranged dmg and silencing shot for Counterattack, some 6% crit and 4% less inc dmg. In the end I think silencing shot can be more disrupting. Between 2 racials, 3 classes, several class abilities/talents plus pvp trinkets able to remove it plus the 2 min cooldown the likelihood of using it effectively is pretty slim.

Scaling stings and traps sound like a good idea but 10% doesn't sonud like a big improvement. Heh, maybe an orc hunter with imp stings, wyvern and imp traps that manages to stack all 3 with brooch and blood fury up that would be like what 3k dmg? (although I'm not sure if serpent would replace the wyvern dot).

Overall it seems like we're still most effective in the outlast role and are still easily minimized with many setups. Well, buffs are buffs right? ;(

In my opinion the Hunter does not have enough survivability abilities. As a warlock, speccing Demonology means gaining a huge amount of possibilities to survive very long and do a significant amount of damage anyways. As a Hunter, speccing Beast Mastery means gaining some buffs very useful for pve (group support) and gaining a pet dealing moderate damage during the Bestial Wrath. What's missing in my eyes is some kind of talent making the Hunter being kept alive more easily or at least giving him some possibilities to do so by himself. Hunters are killed too easy and that's what makes their immense damage output even worthless in high rated pvp matches :<.

That's an issue for every class that doesn't have IceBlock/Bubble. Rogue+Warrior+Mage on anyone is a guaranteed class lockdown, what makes hunters so special that they have be able to get away from it.
Sorry for ninjaing the thread, please continue your discussion.

We are special because we can do _nothing_ while being locked down in melee.

Casters can still cast (and mostly get talents to prevent spell interruption to go with it), melee can still melee (duh). Melee classes get abilities to help them close the gap when locked down at range, why shouldn't hunters get abilities to help them get ranged when locked in melee?

Well they do, dont they? Scatter shot, the freeze trap (or is it the other one, never bothered to remember the names ), wing clip... Yes i do know its hard for hunters to get away from melee, but its just as hard for melee to get in range against some classes (druids counter warriors, specially if there is also a mage - i'm talking about 5v5)

No, it's not, and suggesting that is a bit insulting. 1) Ping benefits the chaser, not the person being chased (i.e. the hunter), so whatever I may see on my screen, the lag is going to favor you and between crippling poison and hamstring, you will have no problem keeping me locked down. 2) Warriors have charge, intercept, hamstring. Rogues have sprint, stuns, stealth, and crippling poison. Hunters have... A trinket to get range from that, and traps, but if we pop a freezing trap you're still going to have more opportunities to charge/intercept me or vanish/stealth on me, and there is little to nothing I can do about it. If we're talking chess match dynamics, pretty much every every class that needs to run has an escape tool... Except hunters. In other words, we lack the counter that is integral to the survival of so many other classes (ice block/blink for mages, formshift for druids, fear and the ability to kill everyone else in the game with ease for warlocks... etc., etc.) If you want to talk about imbalance between warriors and other classes, you're missing the point of this thread. There are some decent counters between hunters and warriors. But as you said, we're talking pvp, 5v5.

Some changes I'd be interested in seeing would be increasing the cooldown on silencing shot to a minute, but making it a legitimate 6 second silence as opposed to the 3 second interrupt it is now. I'd also be interested in seeing the changes noted above, particularly with regard to deterrence on a shorter cool down and with (even a chance) to dispel all movement impairing effects. Even a modified AotC that would make the ability less risky to use would help in increasing our survivability tremendously.

You can't put your pet on a healer (or the mage attacking you) at range and use instants against same healer/caster?

I mean, as an Enhancement shaman, I can currently do _nothing_ to attack a hunter if he's good. If I pause to cast LB with its mighty 20 yard range and 3s cast time I will just get outranged. I can stand there and spam heal myself until I get hit with Intimidation/Scatter and then I'm toast and haven't done any damage to the hunter anyway. Taking FS off DR might help this, but between Wing Clip, Concussive Shot, Freezing Trap, and Beast Within/Scatter Shot/Entrapment depending on your talent tree of choice, I still don't see ever getting in range of a decent hunter unless I've got someone else slowing you down for me.

Please don't construe that as a complaint -- I'm just saying that OK, yeah the counter to you might be a mage with Frost Nova, but you are the counter to other classes.

Enhance shaman suffer from similar issues when it comes to Roots, Snares, and stuns. The difference is they can still do a large amount of damage when a warrior or rogue is on them, and they still provide a lot of strength to the group with totems. If you want to bring up group synergy, a single rogue, warrior, or frost mage on your team can completely shut down a hunter allowing you to rip right through him about as fast as you would a clothy. 2 of your specs are very strong for arena while not even 1 spec is strong for hunters.

You are talking about 1v1 dynamics while we are saying that our abilities are severely diminished in a 2v2 through 5v5 situation. No one here is going to deny that in duels Hunters are quite powerful. But you simply illustrated the point for us: our abilities are centered around fighting and escaping a *single* player, not multiple players. All other ranged/healing classes have some means for escaping the situations that cripple Hunters, and it is our strength at escaping a single player that seems to be keeping us down.

Again, this is not the Shaman thread. Why is this being discussed in the first place?