Since hunter is undergoing significant changes in 11.1. I thought it would be a good time to remind Blizzard again.
Hunter’s mark has a very mediocre significance in raids and is a worthless garbage in m+ dungeons. I’ve been actively playing m+ this season on 4 characters. I never heard anyone ever saying “oh yeah lets take a hunter, having that hunter’s mark damage buff would be really nice”.
Hunter’s mark in PvE creates unnecessary button bloat. Many hunters do not even use it in PvE. I use it to squeeze extra 0.001% dps and let me tell you, this is the most unfun button to press.
Give us a proper group utility, e.g. 3% crit buff for entire group or something. In m+ it is super difficult to get invited as a hunter, we bring nothing unique to the group. Enh / Elem shaman in comparison not only brings blood lust, but also better interrupt, 4% mastery buff, aoe stun, aoe poison cleansing and curse removal and better DPS.
if hunter & shaman of equal rating queue up for a same group, hunter stands no chances of getting invited.
I actually came on to the forums to give Blizzard some positive feedback (yes! believe it or not, they HAVE pleased one of their customers ) about the changes to Hunters defensives but might as well post it here as a reply instead of a new topic
A hunter who can play and use their entire tool kit is a beast to play with in M+ imo.
You got 5 different interrupt sources Freezing Trap (I am a frequent user of using Freezing Trap as an interrupt), Implosive Trap (combined with Binding Shot is nice to give the tank a break for a few seconds), Intimidation, Bursting Shot and Counter shot. Upon that, you got Binding Shot and Tar Trap which makes things a lot easier for the tank. I play A LOT of keys and I can probably count on one hand how many hunters in range of 10-13 keys that use even 30% of their abilities. I have yet to see a Hunter use Bursting Shot on spread mob(s) to knock them back into the group with the other adds, or the scarab in the back that sounds the alarm before the small tunnel for exemple in Ara Kara before the 3rd boss. Small, yet extremely useful and often powerful, things.
There’s a lot of things that people don’t actually bother to even try to use.
Feign Death for clearing poisons (another new extremely powerful talent!), Disengage can clear some debuffs…
And with the changes to defensives with 2 charges of Survival of the Fittest and ‘Don’t Look Back’ I feel Hunter being on the upper middle of the chart of defensives/survivability - an extremely noticeable and welcome change since we almost always (at least since I started playing in Legion) being one of the, often The, squishest classes.
Using Turtle to deflect inc casts like the Abyssal Blast dot in Dawnbreaker is also something that I rarely see but another example of a small thing being insanely helpful (this time for the healer). 99.9% of the Hunters use Turtle as a panic button during AoE/raid dmg.
I firmly believe that a Hunter brings a lot to a group and I actually think that at least MM Hunter (the specc I mained since Legion) is in a good place. If I had to wish for something, it would be to bring back 2 stacks of Precise Shots, bring back Death Chakram instead of the Sentinel crap (I really dislike that one) and just revert the Dark Ranger build to what it was during those 24 hours or what it was that it actually felt good and was FUN and apparently really appreciated amongs the players.
While I agree with many of your remarks, they’re irrelevant for the current topic. Feel free to create your own topics of appreciation or further non utility based suggestions.
We’re talking about hunter’s group utility, in Blizzard’s view hunter’s group utility is Blood Lust, which is amazing, but there are at least 3 other classes that also bring BL + more utility, and hunter’s mark, which is a total trash, a mockery of utility very mediocre in raids and complete garbage in m+.
While niche utility you mentioned (like tar trap or bursting shot) is nice to have and very helpful in specific scenarios, it won’t help you get invited into your average pug.
If example with shaman wasn’t enough, I will give you another example:
A hunter and mage of equal rating applying for Grim Batol 10-12:
a hunter brings BL, nice but that’s it.
a mage brings BL, +3% intellect buff and decurse that will help a healer immensely on trash after 2nd boss, mass absorb shields during risky pulls or tough AoE.
I too do a lot of m+ on 5 of my characters, I heard the phrase “oh hunter brings Hunter’s Mark damage buff, lets take him!” around 0 times.
“Remove it” would make all of us who actually plays Hunter for its intended purpose really mad. Hunting prey. We are the best class for taking down Rogues and Druids.
If you played this game at the right time (WoD) you would remember Aspect of the Fox.
Aspect of the Fox
3 min cooldown
Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells and abilities for 6 sec. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
Hands down the best raid utility in the game since Vanilla. Taken away without any compensation.
We used to also have Trueshot Aura which gave attack power to anyone within range of you.
I am not talking about removing hunter’s mark as spell, it has had its niche as a tracking ability, especially against sneaky classes, since vanilla and it shall remain so.
I am talking about removing hunter’s mark “utility” element, which increases target’s damaged taken by 5% beyond 80% health, which was added back in season 3 of Dragonflight. It is complete trash, the only people who consider it a real utility are those incompetent slugs at blizzard who introduced it in the first place, when noone asked them to.
It adds to our button bloat in PvE, and is very mediocre in raids (first 20% of boss is the least when you need to do more damage) and is complete trash in m+. This buff element shoould be removed from hunter’s mark and we must be given a proper utility.
P.S. Just watched Yoda’s update on m+ related class changes, he says “For BM hunter to be “meta” (i.e. worth being invited to high keys), he needs to do ridiculously high amount of damage, because he has no raid buff, since Hunter’s Mark is a complete fake”.
Yep, it hurts and this is how we’re perceived in high m+ keys and this why it is so difficult for us to get invited.
Exactly, this is what I am advocated for. They just robbed us of our group utility we used to have since early days of vanilla, then years later gave us this turdy “buff” from hunter’s mark.
This is just insulting. AP buff can be a bit redundant since warriors already bring it, but the crit buff would be rly nice.
Hunter’s Mark is just annoying to look at in a raid, when it’s comically oversized and you can obviously tell which enemy you’re going to attack in the room.
) about the changes to Hunters defensives but might as well post it here as a reply instead of a new topic