Hunters need entire Rune Rework, not just buffs

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Bunch of threads about Hunters again, lovely to see.
However, it is time to whine about the runes YET AGAIN, as Blizzard appears to be completely inept at taking feedback to their live PTR as to what needs alteration so here we go again!

The runes are crap, either in design, allocation and/or synergy.

CHEST

  • Lion should not be a rune, remove the 10% bonus to Hunter and make it a skill book. [EDIT: one of the most common complaints form Hunters is how this rune overshadows all the other runes, no one likes being forced to pick one rune because it invalidates all other runes. In a group setting unless you have two Hunter’s you not picking this rune affects not only you but the entire group. If it is mandatory for group buff then it should not be a “choice” to make, it should just be something we can bring to the table.]
  • Master Marksman’s mana cost reduction is pretty meaningless now that you’ve added in Viper Aspect, it trivializes any mana issue the Hunter may have. I have no idea what to add to this rune but it needs a rework since you made half of it useless with Viper Aspect
  • Lone Wolf should be removed. I don’t care anymore. Hunters come with Pets, that’s final. This is a stupid rune that doesn’t belong in a classic environment and I’m tired of thinking of ways of trying to fix it. [EDIT: Let me clarify this one, part of the problem is that you transfer the damage the pet would do over to you but you don’t get any of the utility/functionality of a pet, essentially making you ‘less’ of a class.] [EDIT: I’ve started to realize how this rune can still be useful for people and I do not think it should be removed, however I do still think that it needs something additional to it to make up for the lack of pet utility]
  • Cobra Strikes should be moved to Boots Slot (more on this later) [EDIT: I forgot to mention that it should also proc from any critical strike so melee can also use this, not just ranged]

LEGS

  • Kill Command needs a complete rework. I have 2 ideas. One is that you turn it into the Hunter equivalent of Living Flame, the pet’s attacks now cleave all nearby targets for 100% damage for however long Living Flame is active. That gives BM hunters an AOE ability. The other is to just turn it into an execute ability. You can click it and force the pet to instantly attack the target for 120% normal damage, if the target is at 20% health or lower then the attack does twice the damage and has a 10% increased crit chance. 10sec CD. [EDIT: Alternatively, the simplest fix that requires the least amount of rework is simply this: Reduce the CD to 20 or perhaps even 15 seconds]
  • Sniper Training needs to be changed. 1 second standing still = 2% crit chance. There’s so much moving around in Gnomeregan that this rune has been made pointless. The “sniper” class fantasy does not fit into your raid design and we should not be punished for that. [EDIT: Actually, yknow what, I just thought about something when it comes to this
 Why do Mages get a rune that just gives them 15% crit chance? Why do Warlocks get a rune that gives them AND their pet 10% crit chance? Yknow what Sniper Training does? 10% crit chance, for the Hunters SHOT ABILITIES. Nothing else. And you have to stand still for 6 seconds. After thinking about this huge disparity I’ve change my mind. Hunters should get 20% crit chance for standing still for 3 seconds or we should just get 15% all the time and not have to stand still at all. Warlock and Mages do not need to stand still for 6 seconds for their crits to take hold and their crit chance goes for all their abilities and for Warlocks with the upcoming dot crits rune in P3 that will likely also be affected by this.]
  • Serpent Spread, change it to Sting Spread, all stings (yes wyvern too) now fires off 3 full stings, all stings also gain 20% to their effects. [EDIT: Remove the 20% to their effects and make all stings able to crit instead. Serpent and viper’s crit will be to their periodic ticks and do twice the effect and scorpid’s will reduce STR and AGI by an additional 50% if it crits. Chimera Shot will be unaffected by any crit and treat the target as normal. Wyvern do not get any benefit from this as it might make it hyper powerful.]
  • Flanking Strike is fine now that we got Melee Specialist I suppose.

GLOVES

  • Beast Mastery, I have no idea if people are still getting dunked on by homing missile pets but if that’s no longer the case then it is time you removed the nerf you gave this rune. Either way it should be moved to Chest slot and take Lion’s place.
  • Explosive Shot should benefit from all trap talents. [EDIT: I forgot to mention that with this change it should probably have a 10 or even 15 second CD as it is an instant attack that can immobilize people 3 times over, however it should not share CD with Explosive Trap. Alternatively, I think that Explosive Shot should give a debuff called Shellshock that is essentially a daze debuff where all attacks, casting speed and movement speed are slowed down by 50% and if a target gets this debuff twice then they are stunned for 4 seconds. The chance of each explosive hit would be 30% chance to daze. making this more a crowd control utility ability than a damage focused ability.]
  • Chimera Shot is in an ok spot now actually, wouldn’t mind getting the 5% damage still missing from it but it’s ok in general. However, there is a MASSIVE flaw with this rune because of Viper Aspect, and that is Viper proc. It’s useless. Oh a bit of mana back whoopdidoo. It should silence the target instead.
  • Carve should be removed or turn in into a 30sec CD buff that when used makes your next 3 special melee attacks cleave all targets in a cone in front of you for full damage. However, I’m in favor of just removing it and replacing it with something else. Like proper Disengage and Harpoon.

WAIST

  • Expose Weakness is a boring rune, I got nothing else to say about it, it might be good for damage but holy moley is this rune just BORING, replace it. [EDIT: Let me clarify this: I mean this for ALL classes. PERSONALLY I think that simple +damage runes are insanely boring, yes this is a proc that you need to crit for it to happen but even so it is just so DULL, someone below mentioned that it could instead be a proc for Aimed Shot to be an instant cast, that’d be more interesting than just +damage]
  • Melee Specialist is getting moved to Chest and replaces Cobra Strikes’ spot. (Melee Specialist, Beast Mastery and Master Marksman are clearly the core runes for their respective specs, they should not be on different rune slots, they should be on the same slot. I don’t care what is phase 1 and phase 2, I care about the synergy.)
  • Steady Shot, it’s such a trash ability. I hate it, I have always hated it. There’s never been a point where I’ve been glad that golly gee I get a button to press for the sake of pressing it. However
 I figured out a very simple way to make this one useful
 Beast Mastery! What? yes! In retail a talent for Steady Shot gives YOU focus. But we don’t have Focus in Classic, but our pet
 Our pet does. So make Steady Shot give 10 Focus to the pet and critical gives it twicefold, allowing it to use its abilities more often. [EDIT: Even if we disregard my PERSONAL SUBJECTIVE bias against this ability, the ability in itself is either just a nerf (as it cuts into autoshots) or it is such a minor increase in overall DPS that it just feels like a fluffer ability to keep Hunters pressing something for the sake of it.]

BOOTS

  • Trap Launcher is fine. [EDIT: It’s spell power scaling that is the problem]
  • Dual Wield Specialist should be removed. Why? Because melee have two ways of playing, either with 2handed or by dualwielding and you added in a rune that favors only ONE playstyle, that is bad design, period. Replace it with a new melee rune cause this one is objectively trash. Alternatively add in a new rune (4th Boot rune) that is for 2handed.
  • Invigoration, yknow how I’ve complained about how Viper Aspect has made certain things irrelevant? Yeah. Invigoration is a dead rune. This is why I think it should be replaced by Cobra Strikes. The only way I can think of to make Invigoration useful is to make pet crits heal itself for 5% health instead of giving the Hunter 5% mana. (if you change it into giving the pet health then move it to Gloves, or move it to Waist and move Steady Shot to Gloves)

So the final result of this would be

CHEST
[OPEN SLOT]
Beast Mastery
Master Marksman
Melee Specialist

LEGS
Kill Command
Sniper Training
Sting Spread
Flanking Strike

GLOVES
[OPEN SLOT]
Chimera Shot
Explosive Shot
Disengage + Harpoon

WAIST
[OPEN SLOT]
[OPEN SLOT]
Steady Shot

BOOTS
[OPEN SLOT]
Trap Launcher
Cobra Strikes

[EDIT: If I’m deadwrong about Lone Wolf then you can personally place it in Chest if you want to.]

Hey Blizzard, here is an actually interesting rune idea:

Bestial Synergy
Some Pet abilities are now used by both the Hunter and the Pet simultaneously. These include Charge, Cower, Shell Shield and Prowl.

This would allow you to mitigate threat, give you a potential survivability CD, allow you to close the distance if melee AND give Hunters the ability to go stealth which is a completely new playstyle.

Give us runes that actually fit into the experimental nature of SoD and not boring crap like Expose Weakness, Carve and Invigoration.

We can go on and on about how Hunters are lacking in DPS this DPS that but the fundamental problem with Hunters from day 1 was the crap runes and it will continue to be this going forward as a lot of runes are dead weight that no one picks because they’re trash. We need a rune overhaul before we need a class tuning as class tuning would have to be redone if a rune overhaul was made.

16 Likes
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It is very reasonable what you wrote here, even if I am not sure if to delete or not LONE WOLF, i like BM talents right now because it lets me do greatly a melee spec, but also “ranged” ( but it sucks anyway ).

I agree on Sniper Training, it needs to start its buff sooner, Sting Spread too is cool, but with a precisation, the enemies hit by it will receive the extra damage of nature from chimaera shot ( not like now ). Kill Command can be done in a lot of ways, I like the idea of execute, but as I said some posts ago, I’d prefer an actual version of what we have in retail with a large cooldown like now, but reduced by the focus the pet uses ( so BM oriented ).

Beast Mastery I agree, Explosive shots too. Chimera shot + viper sting could be very useful in some fight where you have to mana burn the enemies mana, but yes ususally it is a useless combo, it could be a nice way to have a kick, you sting and kick with chimera, like earth shock from shamans, Carve yes should become like Butchery I agree.

Expose weakness is boring but effective, it may stay like it is, its meaning is to increase aoe scenarios damage, or to have a pvp spec where you can move and maxiing the single shots, instead of doing the full rotation ( steady shot should provide more ST damage ).
Melee Specialist I agree because of Lion interference.
Steady shot: I love this spell ( when we were in TBC ), and right now it is almost always a DPS loss, your idea regarding the pet gaining focus is very good, and could also keep the clucky mechanic we have now , or it could simply obtain the damage it should have in other versions ( TBC and WOTLK ) of a shot stronger or at least as strong as autoshot, or becoming a new talent like wild quiver for ST. If I have to be honest I’d like too a weak steady shot like now, but where the cast and auto shot do not clip themselves, like in retail, because chimera shot in WOTLK hit harder but has also more cooldown, so the rotation was more fluid. If we use a rotation for BM, where we use Multishot, serpent sting and steady shot, in this case we would have a fair BM rotation, with pet exra focus. I’d like to see all bakes with focus fire too!

Trap launcher is not fine, I demand a scaling of RAP or AP from it, or a rune that will convert some of the inteligence in SP, the rest of the rue works fine.
I like dual specialist like it is now, I beleive in case of the hunter Dual Wield should be better than 2Handed in ST, 2 handed has Carve for AOE and trap launcher.
I just want a little improvement between raptor strike and flanking strike, I beleive a better interaction between them is a must. Melee hunter got hge nerfs, we all know but they were deserved, however there is a lot of RNG in it, I’d rise the chance to reset the cooldown of Flanking strike to 30%, so a dual weilder should reasonably keep always the three stacks of flanking strike, while for a 2Handler it should be a little harder, but he can use other runes, and always a stronger base Flanking strike ( for higher maximal damage ).
Cobra strikes on feet is a great idea!!!

3

is may be a little OP, but it would force us in using some very unuseful pets, but is a good idea nonetheless

4

Yeah I don’t think it’s a useless rune. It is useful. I just find it so boring that I’d rather have something different that is just more interesting.

Nah Trap Launcher is fine as a rune, what’s not fine is the SP scaling on skills. What we need is just for them to alter all Hunter abilities across the board to go with RAP over SP. It’s a separate issue that ties into traps but the launcher itself does its job just fine.

Maybe all we need is a skill book that makes RAP convert to 2:1 SP, so 100 RAP = 50 SP.

5

The solution is very simple. Just nerf shamans, casters so rest classes dont look like garbage

3 Likes
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Good old , i want to use most op abilities at the same time thread. Wont happen, you got some much allready as A hunter. Just need to boost ranged dps and you are all good.

Can solo almost anything , farming world/dungeons.

PvP you can chose to kill people or let the pet nuke for you.

In Pve you had the most broken specc for most of phase 2. Its still broken but «ok» . You just need to get more dmg for ranged and ur good.

Trap launcher , kings etc.

2 Likes
7

And shockingly, when people do those things you say they do, they use the same runes because the other ones are awful and not worth using. So because some runes are “OP” that means all other runes should remain useless instead of being buffed. Got it. Seen your posts about this before and clearly you’re just a troll. Ignored.

1 Like
8

There are other classes having it way Worse then you. U have been op one way or another since sod started

9

You got me until there.
This is SoD, not classic, the whole point is to have new fun ways to play the game. Hunters didn’t get any new role unlike other pures, melee and lone wolf are something at least.

Plus the rune is nicely balanced now, the only reason it’s unusable is because lion exists as a rune.
Lion should be split into a book spell and a passive 10% rune, that alone would solve a lot of issues.

1 Like
10

I agree that it should experiment, but I don’t see how it is experimental to just remove the pet without adding something to it. We might get the damage from the pet but what about the added functionality and utility? Easier to just remove it and replace it with something else. Like, I dunno, if the Hunter dies then you take control of your pet for 60 seconds or until it dies, the pet can resurrect you through the power of love.

That’d be far more interesting to me than just “hey, yknow 30% of your utility? Let’s remove that”.

To me Lone Wolf doesn’t really offer anyting besides offsetting the pet damage with your damage.

I want pets to be enhanced and made MORE interesting, removing them just isn’t.

As it stands with Lone Wolf; melee hunters is just an extremely streamlined version of Warriors and MM is exactly the same minus the pet abilities, aggro utility and lack of taunt if you don’t go BM rune. In my eyes you’re trading away more than you gain.

11

Okay but passive runes should stay passive
There should always be at least 1 0-button spec in the game, this spec is BM hunter

12

Ok, don’t know which of the runes you think I turned passive into active but all right then, I disagree. :V

[Below not directed at you, Fox]

Anyway, obviously I’m not going to be 100% correct about all of these runes, if ya’ll got better ideas then by all means spitball them. I’m not clinging to these ideas like god’s gospel. They’re just ideas I had that I think could be interesting.

My main point with these are very simple

Lion - Overshadows the others

MM - Kinda redundant with Viper Aspect now.

Cobra Strikes - Weirdly slotted, other runes in the same slot are better and overshadow it.

Kill Command - Seen lots of suggestions for changes but I barely see anyone who likes it for what it is.

Sniper Training - Objectively speaking there is too much moving around in both PvP and dungeons (as they go by super quick now) and raids by their very mechanics disallowing you from just standing still for too long.

Explosive Shot - Yet to see anyone pleased with this ability. Fact of the matter is that Hunters are not and will not be a primary AOE damage dealer.

Beast Mastery - Just weirdly slotted, makes more sense to stand side by side with MM.

Melee Specialist - Same as above. They’re basically core runes, hell the BM rune is named the same as the BM spec for crying out loud.

Dual Wield - I don’t understand why dual wield gets a rune specific for it but 2hand doesn’t. Can 2hand use trap launcher instead? Yes, and so can a dual wielding Hunter. But a dual wielding Hunter can ‘also’ use this rune whereas a 2hand Hunter cannot.

Invigoration - Viper Aspect has made it redundant, chances are you’ll get Viper Aspect before this one even.

Steady Shot - Middling ability that cuts into autoshots, is anyone satisfied with this rune?
Chimera Shot - The viper proc just isn’t useful now that we have Viper Aspect

Then there are my personal issues with Serpent Spread, Lone Wolf and Expose Weakness. But the other ones above do need adjustment or complete overhauls. It doesn’t ‘have to be’ what I suggest but they do need to be updated, they need to be updated since their very launch in Phase 1.

So by all means, spitball. if anyone got a better idea for what Chimera Shot should do when it procs a Viper Sting besides silencing the target then I’m all ears. But to me it makes the most sense to just update it since Viper Aspect made it redundant as its sole purpose is to refund mana drained, not drain more mana.

13

I didn’t say that you offered to make some passive runes, I just expressed my desire for the runes not to become active in the process of the potential upcoming change (many people advocate for that)

Yes what you suggest generally makes sense but I think the devs do not think in that dimension at all. I mean, why the hell are we below tanks in terms of DPS? I doubt that they’ll be able to do decent rune design if they cannot make a damage dealer deal damage lol

14

From phase 1 it was very clear that the devs do not main or even alt Hunter’s and have no clue as to how to design them. What flabbergasts me more than that is how horrendously slow they are at taking any criticism from Hunters into consideration. We had to wait like a month or more before they decided to revert ‘some’ of the initial Chimera and Explosive Shot nerfs that happened day 2.

15

Yes all that you say is true, not only are they slow, but they are also very few numerically and underfunded

The SoD team are effectively a small team of modders who have been tasked to do something with the game with very limited resources, whence no new content and only reworked and reused assets and the inability to fix last-phase problems several months later

16

BTW this is a week with no patch notes, and this saddens me quite a lot

17

I’m sure they got better things to do like add in a supply crate that is account bound and gives us 3spirit/agility and only costing 5.5g.

18

Why exactly hunter need a buff ? Or such drastic changes?
The class preforms very well in both pvp and pve

19

Maybe because hunters preform really well in both pvp and pve and still the easiest class to lvl

I’d argue they designed the class really well and one of the better designed class in classic

20

Except it doesn’t in PVE judging by the dps rankings for Gnomeregan and again, I will say the same thing I said to the other troll up there; The ones who are performing “well” what runes do you think they’re picking? That’s right, the same runes, because the other runes are crap. That’s the whole point. Just because some runes are “good” doesn’t mean that the class and its specs are fine.

And again, the dps rankings for Gnomeregan shows that ranged Hunter ISN’T good. And while Melee is it is also extremely boring to play because of its extremely limited set of buttons and lack of movement utility in the form of disengage and harpoon.

1 Like