To keep up with other classes hunters need to run in and out of melee range every 30 seconds or so which results in a very awkward gameplay on some encounters.
It is a fun and engaging mechanic, which I personally love and would like to stay BUT there are a couple of problems with it.
Its not just a Surv spec thing. All 3 specs have to do this if they don’t want to be a burden. You simply can not ignore this “trick”. There is no spec that offers pure “stand and shoot” playstyle. Every spec has to trapweave.
Trap we are using in our single target rotation deals damage in an AOE. Which is great in some instances. In some though - not so much. For example on factions champions we can’t use that because it breaks CC on surrounding targets. We could switch to Black arrow or a single target trap, but their damage is simply laughable when compared to the AOE one.
Only center of the Boss model triggers traps. Trigger box is the same size for huge bosses like Onyxia and human sized targets. So on some encounters we have to run for so long to place our traps while also being unable to shoot. Models of some bosses can also be decieving so aiming for that sweet spot can be that much more annoying.
If boss moves out of our traps AOE or if it moves before trap is triggered we lose our damage (and any chances of proccing LnL). So on some encounters where boss can’t stand in place we lose our ability to deal proper damage. Not to mention that sometimes tanks can move bosses just because they wanted to. And if it makes your trap not trigger - GGs.
Damage trapweaving gives us is essential to keeping up with other classes. It is not some extra cool trick we can do to top the meters. Its something we have to do. On encounters where its either impossible or too risky to trap we just don’t deal damage. Period. Look at Valkyries fight.
Its a cool mechanic. Makes some fights way more engaging with little tricks you can do to set up traps, or boss ability cooldowns you gotta keep track of. I am not asking to remove it. I’m just wondering if devs are aware of how unintuitive and sometimes annoying it is to DPS as hunter.
I’m asking you guys, please give us an option to not trapweave. Let us choose. How? I dont know. You have a bunch of options like making Black Arrow a real ability, or giving us a trap launcher or rearranging talent tree so that only Surv spec benefits from trapweaving etc etc etc.
But if you arent going to give us that option, at least make trap triggerboxes bigger.
-So we wouldnt have to run for so long while being in melee range to place them.
-So we wouldn’t worry about tanks moving bosses out of traps, leaving them not triggered.
Please, make it feel smoother. Its great on human sized targets. You step in, you step out, all is great. Make it feel somewhat same with big ones.
Or just make traps do more damage so that this charade would at least feel justified i dont know haha
It’s been an easy solution for Blizzard so far. Hunters have been severely affected by final patch balance for ArPen (along with other classes).
The only thing that has stopped every Hunter spec being bottom tier is trap weaving. Trap weaving allows Surv to be viable due to the Lock & Load talent bug (the 434 bug helps to a lesser degree).
So rather than fix the class, which involves effort, Blizzard have allowed players to exploit bugs instead.
I don’t know about surv PvP, but maybe make higher proc chance from Black Arrow? Like 20-30%? Since BA shares cooldown with traps so using it in PvP would block hunter from using traps. It would be a good trade off.
Surv isn’t used much in PvP so you’re right in saying buffing Black Arrow would have a minimal effect there.
Black Arrow is also affected by the LnL bug so it’s proc chance is 21% rather than the 6% listed. You could buff it further.
Personally i’d like to see some work done on the other Hunter specs. I’d prefer for there to be an option to avoid trapweaving by choosing another spec rather than further buffing Surv, but all though the expansion both MM & BM have been bottom tier dps.
Agreed. They could buff black arrows dmg to be preferable over trapping but that wouldn’t solve trap weaving for MM or BM. If theyre buffing other classes hunter could do with some love too.
On the US forum these old developer comments on Surv were posted-
1) Trap Launcher is a very cool idea and something we would love to do. However, it requires a lot of tech and may end up beyond the scope of what we can do for patch 3.1. We don’t want to give hunters a buggy, half-baked ability. If you are going on the PTR to test Ulduar or just mess around with numbers, I wouldn’t worry about this ability, at least for now.
2) Black Arrow is on the trap cooldown timer, and we assume largely for PvE. Black Arrow is your ability to proc things normally caused by traps (like LnL) in PvE situations when using a trap is a pain or the target is immune.
3) Think of Lock and Load triggering from traps (esp. Frost Trap) as a PvP mechanic. Think of Lock and Load triggering from periodic ticks (esp. Black Arrow) as a PvE mechanic. In PvE, you may want to use traps on trash or group pulls however. In PvP, nothing is stopping you from using Black Arrow if it works for you.
You won’t be trapping raid bosses to get LnL procs, even if they are immune to the effects. You probably won’t be trap dancing much at all in PvE. You should really use Black Arrow for that purpose.
If the proc rate ends up being too low, that is certainly something we are willing to adjust.
That dev wouldn’t believe the amount of dancing we are doing. I guess he got fired at some point or something. I just don’t believe, anyone at current Blizzard cares about hunter class like that guy did. Thanks for posting that, I’ll go read US forums now!
