While I can see some hunters giving a Raptor Strike rotation a shot, namely myself, I can't see the vast majority of hunters doing this. Mainly, because of the difference in play style this rotation would require. Like you mentioned. Currently, a hunter can achieve a nice shot rotation using a one-button macro and rolling his face on it (I'm told, I manually weave). Running in and out of melee cannot be achieved this way. A hunter would have to pay attention and move in and out at the right time.

And do you honestly think the majority of WoW hunters have that kind of attention span? I don't. (oh look! something shiney!)

I think the DZ removal is a good thing. It's a mistake left over from beta that should never have survived this long. It will help hunters a lot, but will not help us survive. That's a whole other can of worms.

I'm still afraid of the fact that without a healer (I have a high rated 3 DPS 3v3 team), a DoT class can still cover me with DoT's and do the pole dance, effectively avoiding a good 90% of my damage and placing a timed death sentance on me.

I'm also worried about Melee classes, whom this deadzone change will do nothing to help the fact that they are going to kill me in roughly 10 seconds without me putting so much of a scratch on them.

Other than that its going to be nice, viper stinging Mages who blink to my old deadzone... that is until they frost nova/cone of cold me... I doubt much will change until they give us some kind of snare resistance on a relatively short cd, and address LoS abuse.

I think our weaknesses are highlighted in the smaller brackets. We have less problems in 5vs5. This isn't because we have an abundance of utility, or even a single very useful thing we offer the group. It's simply because the needs of the group are fulfilled, and we happily fit into a 5th slot.

As the size of the groups go down, the teams need for utility remains the same. As we offer less, we are not an ideal partner.

Arcane shot as an offensive spell doesn't fix this, nor will better survival techniques or burst damage (if we were given that much burst, it would severely effect balance in other areas of the game).

A debuff akin to MS or CC on a very short CD is the only answer. We will never be given enough other utility to make us comparable to the viable hybrid DPS classes like spriest or ele sham.

Having beta pet abilities could change utility.
Crab with root, Spider with net, Wolf with party Agi/Str buff, Bear with HP shout, Owl with spell interrupt attack, Striders had heal... large amount of options but only 1 can be used. The one that fits your team the most.

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Enraged Howl

Pet customization is something I'm waiting for long time.

Although I've been a hunter-apologist most of my WoW career, I don't understand the continued gripe with LoS considering the deadzone removal. Doesn't this change put a hunter on par with basically any/every casting-class currently in the game regarding Line of Sight? LoS issues were a major boon before because our 3 yard additional deadzone prevented us from doing any damage while being kited around a Nagrand arena pole (by the time we had range, the target would be turning the corner). But now we've presumably closed the gap. If we aren't using a ranged weapon, we can use melee (e.g. you will have concussive shot -OR- wingclip available at all times barring cooldowns if you need to close distance/keep pace). And you can use a frost trap if you're continuously kited around the same pole.

Likewise in Blade's Edge, the ramps will be less of an annoyance because of the removal of the 3 yards to range.

After watching my 2v2 priest go back and forth with a mage in a 12 minute Nagrand match, I don't understand what else has to happen. LoS kiting occurs with all classes. The deadzone-"elimination" ought to remove much of the extra burden hunters were faced with.

Perhaps I'm missing something. Enlighten me.

The only change I could theoretically see would be to allow a shot with a brief hidden cast-time (multi-shot) to finish if it's cast when the target is within LoS but subsequently moves out before completion. This could get a bit hairy though.

Komatose, I think you're forgetting we still have the .5 second delay on Autoshot coupled with the fact we can't start the autoshot until they're 5 yards away. I mean, it's better than 8 yards, but still not ideal.

Probably due to the vulnerability of school lockout when you're stood channeling spells, with great big beams showing exactly where the damage is coming from if there was any doubt before.

I tested this last night on the PTR and arcane shot would not remove Divine Shield. I had the paladin remove all his buffs, then use DS. Arcane shot did no damage and did not remove the shield. After that, I had him try using Blessing of Protection on himself with no other buffs and arcane shot was able to remove that.

Yeah it appears that you have to do arcane shot and have it land at the exact moment that divine shield goes up but before the paladin becomes immune in order for it to dispel. In other words, it doesn't really dispel divine shield.

It's a known 'feature' caused by server lagged/sync. Blizzard has stated that it's intended unintentionally

This is where I presumed finishing a hidden-cast-time shot would get hairy. A disclaimer: I'm not defending the cast-time idea, I merely put it out there as an alternative gripe for LoS I've recently read. As Shandara pointed out, priests and locks have this for some of their channeled spells. The difference between auto and multi in my theoretical alternative lies in the fact that auto-shot is an automatic, continuous cast. Waiting for LoS while running after the target, all-the-while allowing your auto-cast weapon-speed CD to go into affect could make for a hairy situation considering you can thread other shots/stings within this period (i can hear the cries of Overpowered already). Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you simply want to be able to autoshot while on the run. I'd jive with that, but I don't see it happening.

Although perhaps I'm not addressing the point you're trying to make. If you're simply suggesting our mana-efficient (zero), default, automatic attack can't be used efficiently on the run, then I will agree with you. Perhaps reducing the hidden cast-time would help in that regard, while still making use of some non-movement requirement. For now, lag still plays it part however.

As far as doing damage while kiting/getting kited, we will still have arcane shot, stings, pets on the assumption that they haven't been torn apart yet, and melee (depending on range). Not great compared to what we can do at range, but much more manageable than with a deadzone hindering us. Aside from the melee-oriented classes, the limited options to output damage during a kite will be, in my opinion, much more in line with other casting classes after the deadzone removal.

Can someone explain to me how a dispel that other classes have and the ability to shoot someone from 5-8 yards makes hunters "overpowered"?

A lot of people are complaining on the regular forums (I know, I know) but I just cannot understand where they are coming from. Hell, a druid started a massive thread about this...how does any of this even really affect a druid?

Can someone put there argument into words I can understand please?

Well, the argument regarding the deadzone would be that it allows a hunter to do more or less their ranged dps (minus steady), plus their melee dps at all times, so long as they can bob in and out of the 5 yard radius of melee range. Due to the fact that only one class, rogues, has a more powerful snare than wingclip/frost trap, this "dancing" becomes a very real possibility. Given the "slush" added to melee range in pvp, it is unclear exactly how things will play out. It's entirely possible that hunters may be able to melee and attack from range at the same time at the 6 yard range.

A further point is that a hunter has two casts (auto, multi) with only a 0.5 second casting time. Given that the base run speed with boot enchant is 7.5 yards per second, and wing clip slows to 40%, a hunter need only generate 1.5 yards outside of melee range to be able to cast these on a target moving at them. If haste actually effects multishot and auto (not sure myself), that becomes an even smaller amount of room needed to fire these abilities.

The argument regarding arcane shot being overpowered begins by noting that Offensive Dispels have, throughout WoW's history, been given only to a select group of classes (shaman, priest, warlock). The only class to get an offensive dispel after release, mages, got it only at a prohibitive mana cost.

In the context of a hunter, the arcane shot change could be perceived as overpowering in two regards:

First, it gives the hunter a powerful counter to buff based healers, such as priests and resto shaman. Losing a renew/PoM/Earth Shield every 6 seconds is a tremendous loss in either mana efficiency or healing per second. It also allows the hunter to remove a number of abilities that counter the class, such as BoF, BoP, Inner Fire, Blessed Resilience, Blazing Speed, Nature's Grasp, etc.

Second, similar to that of the felhunter's devour magic, the arcane shot change allows a hunter to slowly remove all long duration buffs from a target at zero effective GCD cost (assuming she would have used arcane shot anyways). This can add up to a significant reduction in overall opponent performance, as buffs cumulatively make a big difference, and erases the buffer against offensive dispels when one does get a vital buff (e.g., bloodlust, BoP, innervate, etc.).

And I think a final reason why some intelligent people might complain is that these buffs all seem to be coming very quickly, without much thought to their interaction and synergy.

Recall that when the PTR opened with the revised arcane shot and Kalgan made his post about the dead zone and a potential MS effect on aimed shot, datamined information also pointed to a disarming shot with no minimum range and potentially powerful new pet abilities. If these all happened, it would represent a more dramatic change than some classes received gong from WoW1.0 to TBC -- in other words, people may have written some alarmist posts because they feared an overreaction in the re-balancing process akin to what warlocks seem to have received, where they moved from a relatively unpopular class to an incredibly dominant force in solo and small bracket pvp.



Well, that's the argument as I see it. Personally? I think that complaining before changes have even hit the PTR is very premature. That's the WoW forums for you.

If a Hunter tries to bob in and out of melee in PvP..it's not going to work, considering every single class runs at us to attempt to cut our ranged DPS to zero. Not to mention, going into melee means we're going to get snared, and a Hunter snared in melee means the Hunter will be doing very, very little to the other target. I think a lot of the misconception is that Hunters can do something substantial in melee, while in reality...we can't.

I think Zure did a great job responding. I would like to point out though that there seems to be no one mentioning the hunter melee nerf that will take place in 2.3.

With the new Expertise stat, players will be able to hit us more often where we once would have dodged. This means less dodges which means more damage to us and less times we can use Mongoose Bite. Less Mongoose Bite means less overall melee DPS. So, more damage to us and less damage to them. Sounds like a nerf to me.

Additionally, since the Expertise stat affects parries as well, this should lead to fewer times you can use Counterattack, as well as fewer times to parry and stop damage. Again, nerf.

So, correct me if I'm wrong (and I know someone will), but if I get into melee with a rogue that has 80 Expertise to my 20% dodge and 10% parry, I should see 25% fewer Mongoose Bites and 50% fewer Counterattacks.

As if you needed another reason to get to range.

I don't know about anyone else but I fear hunters more than any other class if they have a clear shot to me. Fortunately I can LOS them but I'm always wary of where they are because more than any other class they can shred me easily if I let them. Viper sting and a pet to keep me in combat 24/7 doesn't help either. So while I do think hunters need buffs I most certainly don't want Blizzard to overshoot the mark as they could very easily make hunters pure rape machines against cloth.

I was simply articulating the argument.

As to hunter melee dps, Hamchook (The World of Warcraft Armory) in his current gear with the S3 hunter weapon, would hit raptor strikes for 1079, mongoose bites for 481 pre-armor. With savage strikes these would each have a pre-resilience crit chance of 52%. Whether that is "something substantial" is to some degree subjective.

I really think there will be measures in place to stop this happening. Melee attacks will somehow be tied to the autoshot timer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't druids land an instant swing after shifting in the past? Wasn't that fixed sometime ago?

An offensive dispell is key to synergy with hunters. We don't work well without an offensive dispeller. This is partly because group utility requires a healing debuff, and that means the group will have trouble dealing with BoP because of the stacked physical DPS of hunter & rogue/warrior. It's also because freedom can completely negate frost trap, which is key to letting us DPS easily with current deadzone and LoS restrictions.

But in general offensive dispell is a luxury ability. Saying it is a 'tremendous loss in mana efficiency or healing per second' in my mind is ludicrous if you take in mind CoT, wounding or mind numbing, or any form of reliable CC or short cooldown interrupts into account.

Warlocks have always been a very strong class, even pre-deathcoil buff. The nature of pre-BC PvP and itemization did not favour warlocks. I don't think anybody was predicting that the cumulative effects of CC and healing debuffs were going to be so important in arena compared to burst damage. It just so happens that warlocks had both all along (spammable CoT is the equivalent of a healing debuff) when most classes only had 1 or none. Also with no healers present and a lack of stam, drain life, life-tap, drain mana and fel armour had little impact (hell paranoia was probably more useful).

If you examine the dire situation hunters are facing in arenas, a somewhat dramatic change is needed. Just as the change from pre-BC PvP to arena favoured warlocks highly, the change was detrimental to hunter-style PvP, which relied on kiting and burst damage, in situations where healers were not present and mana and LoS was of no concern.

I urge people to look at the non-hybrid DPS classes, and what makes them truly viable. (Mage, poly; warrior, MS; warlock, CoT/fear; rogue, wounding/numbing). If hunters are not given ability on-par with them, we will not be up to par in 2vs2/3vs3. We certainly will never offer the utility of a hybrid DPS class (ele sham/spriest).

It isn't hard to predict the outcome of non-significant changes prior to them going live or playing them through on the PTR.

Raptor strike is once every 6 seconds. That is hardly substantial DPS output. Keep in mind this ADDS to a basic melee attack, so raptor strike is not actually as powerful as you appear to be making it sound. There is a very good reason you don't see hunters running around meleeing people.

Also, these changes are anything but "fast." Blizzard had 10 months to watch Hunters and figure out what to do. They made one change a few weeks ago, and based on very large amounts of feedback are making one more. These are hardly ground breaking (or class breaking) changes. And to be honest, I doubt they go far enough in "fixing" hunters.

Just wanted to add given current average arena gear, hamchooks autoattack at 880~(average inc. crits, res, etc...) every 3.6 secs is comparable to 681 damage every 3.8 secs of season 2 wand DPS or 1 druids rejuvenation at 190~/sec. Hunter melee DPS being bad is about as subjective as wand specialization being bad.

Yeah, I don't know where this misconception is coming from but it is entirely silly.

Raptor Strike (Rank 9)
120 Mana
Next melee 6 sec cooldown
Requires Melee Weapon
A strong attack that increases melee damage by 170.

Last time I checked, an additional 170 damage isn't very much at all, especially at the cost of 120 mana. Also keep in mind it can be dodged and parried, unlike ranged attacks.

Hunter Arena/PvP gear is bad. Plain and simple.

Season 2 Hunter gear has less AP then most level pre 70 blues, and AP is the best Arena damage stat for hunters by far. (way surpassing crit)

[Merciless Gladiator's Chain Armor]
(lvl 68) [Laughing Skull Battle-Harness]

Compared to, say, warlock set:
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Robe]
(lvl 70) [Warp Infused Drape]

Not to mention some of the item budget is assigned to extra armor.

Seems extremely inconsistant.