BM hunter animations are a horror story

Classes Hunter
1

Dear Blizzard,

I’m getting back into WoW after a break at the end of Legion, and I’ve made this beautiful void elf hunter. I was playing BM hunter back in vanilla when I was the guy kiting the last boss from UBRS back through the dungeon, so I’ve always loved this class.

Here is where the good news stops. Several of our abilities are simply ridiculous - I look at the updated animations for mages, warlocks etc. I look at the sheer madness of a death knight in full flow, or a demon hunter flinging green fire from his freaking eyes! And against this I have…

Cobra Shot - why am I shooting snots at my enemies? Its green, hissing and swirly… does anyone, in any shooter EVER want to see that coming out of their bow/gun? It doesn’t match any of the class fantasy. What even is a cobra shot? Am I literally pinging cobras at people?

Bestial Wrath - I push this to enrage and I… turn orange?? Seriously? And not even a cool, MoP Burning Embers orange, or a Conflagration orange, but a gross, flat orange that looks like I’ve been dipped in nacho cheese. And my pet… turns orange too. It’s so ugly I sometimes look away from the screen and fall off a cliff.

Aspect of the Wild - I push my other cooldown and… a leaf appears over my head. Am I a druid now? Aspect of the Wild is such a generic term, and with no other effects to light it up it just turns into this odd extra button I should be pressing.

My suggestions are as follows… These borrow from existing animations so don’t require development, and they bring the class fantasy closer to where it should be.

Replace Cobra shot with Wild Shot - animation could be any of the ones we see NPC’s using, or a single shot from MM’s rapid fire, or the arrows we see Sylvanas fire in her RP scenes i.e. Gilneas. This could be customised via glyphs.

Lose the Bestial Wrath effect and just give us a size boost and a little enrage animation over our heads for the duration of the cooldown.

Change Aspect of the Wild to Aspect of the Predator and give us a circling hawk maybe, or a swirly animation under our feet, anything but a leaf really.

These must be so simple to implement, but they’d make the spec so much easier on the eyes. I love the mechanics of the spec as it is currently, but I definitely think in terms of class fantasy it has lost its way.

I haven’t logged onto these forums since Wotlk but I really think a big, quick win is being missed here, and I’d love to know if any other BM hunters feel the same way.

10 Likes
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that can sound stupid but that was excatly problem when i think about making hunter on alt, everytime i see that stupid and booring animations when i meet hunters on dungeons i say, nope fck that alt :smiley:

4 Likes
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I suppose this is one of the bigger issues the class “Hunter” runs into, at least when talking MM and BM (Survival being melee doesn’t count here.) How many different skins / looks can you give an Arrow? A bullet? How much difference can you truly give to the aspects?

I’d say it’s probably one of the harder classes to do a proper, real theme in terms of looks. Fire mages? Give them cool fire and flame effects, holy paladin? Give them amazing light effects, arms warrior? Give them some cool melee animations.

Hunter more or less needs the big treatment, at least the ranged counterparts, survival looks okay, most likely because it was a recent rework. As for cobra shot being weird (As an example) I feel like BM should’ve been the melee spec instead of Survival, would make themes and names so much easier.

When it comes to what they could do to spice up animations across the board, I’d start with the different aspects. Create custom animations (Akin to monk) that works for all races, that actively changes their stances to something more animalistic. Think Udyr from League of Legends. Throw in more than a single bow / gun stance and randomize them, heck do this for all classes. And generally make some more interesting names / Spell effects.

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Ohh dude cmon, look on other games with graphic effect when shoting with bows/guns…

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5

Its red, not orange?? and i quite like my big red t-rex.
Kill command animation is killing it, rest is good too!

What i do miss is some dark ranger ability like raise skeletons in wc3.
And quiver ty!

2 Likes
6

To think of it actually you’re right! Animations and aesthetics suck for BM. And apparently MM rapid fire is a stream of red apples/tomatoes.
Warlocks too, pathetic.
Shadowpriests used to look intimidating - and now just edgy lol.
Sub rogues just turn all shades of purple, and spamming shadowstrike looks legit retarded.
Resto shaman chain heal is a blue rope we shoot through people’s chests and/or as$es.

With such talented design team this is embarrassing :smiley:

2 Likes
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i hate rapid fire animation with a passion, almost turned me off MM completely, gimme back marked shot T.T

1 Like
8

Totally support this for my hunter alt.
Hunters don’t really have animations, just the shooting one. Which is one. That’s it.

I would suggest something like maybe 2-3 animations? Not many, but on a similar fashion for casters,like, one for a normal shot, one for a heavy shot, one for a fast shot. Problem is, make it double for both guns and bows, multiply it for the current races, add kul Tirans cause they have a unique skeleton, then multiply it for 2 for both males and females, that’s how many.

It would still be nice tho. On top of that, a running animation while holding the bow or gun would be damn cool…

And obviously all the things you already stated too.

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Final Fantasy did it really well with their “Hunter” Which is a Bard. Check out their ability animations, they have a bunch, and it looks really great when they weave in all their skills and abilities.

2 Likes
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I really dont mind them as they are, i guess if it was me id do something like ;

Barbed shot - a visible barbed arrow in the target, when firing has a deep read streak.

Cobra shot - a deep green streak that gets brighter the closer it gets and hits with a slight green flash, its spammable so nothing too much visually

Multi shot - the bow has like a projection of a bigger bow with X amount of arrows and then fires

Linked to - beast cleave - a big beast apparition stomps down as the animation, you should choose a beast “apparition” in a menu and can be changed via glyphs, think of this as YOUR inner beast aiding your pet.

freezing trap - cages, rings of arrows, ice, bear pinning down… Tons of variations and easy here can use assets already around.

tar trap come on even i agree this is boring where is frost trap, make this visually change too no need to go into detail here.

Just initial thoughts

11

This part got me… :rofl: Haven’t been in BfA (last played during Legion), but yeah, hunters had pretty bad animations…

Never fell off a cliff because of them, but could imagine it happening :sweat_smile:

1 Like
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Yeah, Cobra Shot animation is not good, i would like it to be simple straight line instead of SSssserpent green line.

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