Ok, let’s just start of by saying this is not a rant about recent nerfs to hunters. I honestly don’t care weather hunters are top dps or not. What I care about is the class being fun and that they bring something usefull to the group/raid(Heart of the Lion).
Season of Discovery has brought new ways to play classes; Warlock tanks, mage healers etc. Apart from a few new cool abilities and pets being busted, hunter’s feel kinda the same though.
Hunter’s were the only class not to get a new “role” in SoD, with the consolation price being the promise of melee hunters. But melee hunters aren’t really good at all. The fact that BM is sort of a hybrid spec and can be played both as melee and ranged is cool and all, but it still feels a bit lacking.
So here’s my solution, replace the Carve rune with “Improved Aspect of the Monkey”.
While Aspect of the Monkey is active:
-Replaces Multishot with Carve
-Replaces Serpent Sting with Serpent Slash
-Replaces Distracting Shot with Growl
-Allows Traps to be used in combat.
Then next phase throw in a new rune that bulks up the hunter + increases threat and boom, hunter tanks and melee hunters.
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Hunters have a new role in raids, it is called actual dps class.
Jokes aside I wouldnt put my hopes up given they can’t even find the balance between pet and hunter. Melee hunter isn’t happening because they are not willing to do drastic changes and given the clown fiesta of the p1, the last thing they want is another phase of hunter dominance.
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I was actually planning to make a similar post, but I will write here my thoughts. Hunters definitely need some design around the runes. I also play a mage and it feels so nice; everything synergizes, runes make sense. Hunters, not so much. Let’s take them by slot:
Chest - Heart of the Lion. Great rune, the problem with it is that it makes other pointless. With the current meta of 10-man raids, you are guaranteed to pick it 95% of the time. In PVP, it’s a no-brainer.
Chest - Cobra Strikes. This rune is badly implemented. It only works with mana-consuming shots. @Blizzard Auto Shot is still a Shot. Let’s say you pick it for BM spec, but then you don’t have shots to trigger it. Who even casts Arcane Shot? You are forced to pick Chimera Shot but then you go BM without BM rune? Really, it makes no sense. It needs to work with Auto-Shot.
Chest - Lone Wolf. Not only that it’s not making up for the pet DPS (without any runes or talents), but it is also wrongly positioned. It should be in the same slot as the Beast Mastery rune. It is one or the other, right Blizzard?
Chest - Master Marksman. A good option.
Legs - Flanking Strikes. Good rune and the only viable option.
Legs - Kill Command. Not worth pressing; really, it should be relaced with the retail variation.
Legs - Sniper Training. This rune is so gimmicky and annoying. The idea is good, but really, mages get a 15% flat crit with 1% mana costs. Hunters get 10% while they don’t move. I don’t get the logic here Blizzard. You really need to rework this rune. It should be 15%, and maybe after 6 seconds standing, you get a 10-second buff or something like that.
Legs - Serpent Spread. Useless rune. Might as well remove it.
Gloves - Chimera Shot. Nice rune. So much potential and usability.
Gloves - Explosive Shot. I like the AOE option and the single-target option with Chimera.
Gloves - Beast Mastery. All good, deserved nerf.
Gloves - Carve. Never used it.
Despite all this, I haven’t experienced so much enjoyment in WoW since 2004-2007. Thank you, Blizz, for creating this season.
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Hunter runes are in a very bad state.
Tko above me has the right idea. I wrote some feedback to re-balance all hunter runes and at the same time better balance BM so that the damage component is active and requires input from the player, instead of being fully passive.
You can check it here if you like: Feedback: shift passive damage from BM runes to active damage to balance pets
Aside from that, they need to keep expanding the melee role for hunter. Mongoose Bite is still useless so right now you just use Raptor, Flanking and then spam Wing Clip to pray for WF procs.
If they had removed HotL and made it baseline without the personal stat boost and created a chest rune for melee instead that fixed MB and Counterattack, melee would’ve been way better off.
Apart from that, I want more pet families to be competitive and families in general given love, or we’ll keep going with the same ones used in vanilla and classic in 2019. My feedback post contains links to previous suggestions on hunter pets so do read that too, if it fancies you.
Hopefully, P1 runes are re-balanced and P2 runes are good so that we don’t have to go through this awful state again.
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IMO, Hunters are quite spoiled.
IMO, they are the bigger winners of the whole SoD, in between pets being turned into monsters and BoK rune that also good enough to run and not be a personal nerf.
And I expect P2 and P3 to be the Hunters peak, simply because BM talent tree is so strong when pets are double of what these trees were meant to improve and Hunters already were very strong early 60 raids.
Late 60 raids Hunters may taper off, that remains to be seen - but I expect them to be quite dominant next half a year, at least.
The problem is not whether hunters are strong or weak. They shine at these low levels, I think anyone can agree on this.
The issue is that hunter runes are all bad. There’s no choice and the best ones are passives or block other choices (HotL).
No other class has this problem in which only a very small handful of runes are useful and the rest very bad or trash. Kill Command gives less than 5 DPS when used optimally, and it’s a 60s cooldown, just to provide an example.
Hunters are playing the exact same way as normal vanilla, and that’s problematic.
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This is blizzard we are talking about, if Heart of the Lion rune shines to much compared to others, they will just nerf it.
Nerf nerf nerf is the only thing they are capable of doing, do not expect other runes to be brought up to be competitive.
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I’ve thought about the idea of replacing the stings with something melee oriented for melee characters as well but I don’t think that’s the solution. What melee need is just plain ol backjump Disengage (and Harpoon to charge forward with).
Disengage, pop off a sting, harpoon back in. That’s how it should work and it would separate how other physical melee classes play like. If you just turn stings into melee skills then… Well then it doesn’t set Melee hunters apart from rogues and warriors really. Sure you use mana but that’s about it.
Also, no. Combat traps should not be locked behind any rune it should just be a learned class quest ability. Other specs should also get to use traps, not just melee. Unless we slap combat traps onto Beast Mastery and Chimera/Explosive Shot so that regardless of the rune you pick you get the ability.
Are hunters the best sod class so far? Absolutly yes there is nothing that they are bad at. Would they be the best class even if the runes didn’t exist? Probably yes.
Personaly I enjoy playing hunter because it is a fun class overall, but it does’t change the fact that our rune options are very limited and boring. I suppose crying about boring runes is op class privilege.
what i am really afraid of tho is that in the later stages of the game they will not be able to ever find the balance between pvp and pve hunter dmg and they will make him to be exactly like in vanilla classic a meme pve class with some auras.
This is only 25 bracket. Hunter twinks, historically were good in low level brakets. Now with pet scaling it made it more obvious.
I do think other classes will shine next phases. There will be many clases with 1shot.
Regardless this does not change the fact that 50% of the runes are just place holders, and can’t swap between them. Literally there is only one viable way to play hunter atm.
That is lion+bm+fs runes. All we want is more viable options, like other classes. Be able to play in 2 3 styles.
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This. I wanted to make the post short and as I felt the topic of hunter runes has been adressed on the forums several times and melee/tank hunters never being talked about I chose to focus on the latter.
But here are my thoughts on runes anyways:
- Heart of the Lion is too important, you’ll be expected to use this in any group play unless there is another hunter to provide it. Even then the 10% bonus stats is huge. Remove the entire rune, make it baseline and take away the 10% self buff to balance out getting another rune.
- Beast Mastery shoud be a chest rune(same slot as Lone Wolf).
- Flanking Strikes shoud be a gloves rune(instead of Beast Mastery).
This free’s up a legs slot that coud be used for something else like combat traps or the iconic disengage leap.
It makes Cobra Strikes more viable cause you’ll actually be able to pick a shot ability that isn’t arcane shot or multi shot.
Then again, cause I really really want this, put a tanking rune in the chest slot next phase. Makes sense cause this is where the big dps increase runes are.
Hunter need some movement abilities/utility/deff CD . Good luck facing other classes at Higher Levels. Rogues and Warriors will sit on us 24\7. More dots, now we will even die faster to warlocks Like before. Will be fun later levels
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Hunters were never OP, their pets were doing too much dmg vs players.
Must been difficult to add a “pets do -50% dmg vs players” debuff…
Meanwhile, druids do more dmg instantly than my pet + Aimshot combined. ROFL
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If you feel that turning on an aura then pressing Pet Attack and Auto Shot for big deeps makes you “the biggest winner of the whole SoD”, you won. I sure didn’t.
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Power-wise, it is.
Pets got elevated from a glorious DoT to machines and much of it was done for free, no rune - just a freebie scaling change. It enables a whole BM tree being a thing.
And yes, Blessing of Kings as an aura? That’s pretty crazy and makes Hunters very desirable.
Do you press new buttons? Not much, but power-wise, Hunters got dollied up both in PvP and PvE.
I am pretty sure they will add some later. Something like disengage in this phase would have made hunter unkillable.
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“BEST CLASS SO FAR”?? what are you talking about… Hunter in SoD = Hunter in 2005-2008… there is almost 0 variation to this class and its playstyle.
Hunters had in 2004 and still have it in SoD:
- dead zone
- only range attack
- no cc
- no pet variation
- no deffensive CDs
- no movement abilities
- no filler ability - like wrath or steady shot
- no synergy with pet or rotation
- some sort of support role with aura Lion/Trueshot
vs
Hunters now have in SoD:
- kind of a ranged AoE with Explo + Multi
- Stronger pet - not so much now, but scaling with stats is OK for me
- some kind of rotation for MM hunters = serpent + Chim
In short… Hunter can be exactly what it was in wow for 20 years… Ranged DMG… and nothing ELSE! 3 talent trees only for DMG and hutners are not even best class to do that…
It is like sports car is loosing a drag race to SUVs… (wars, rogs)
the ONLY FUN thing about hunters was to watch your bugged pet to 1shot things ( and yes…that was really stupid)
The only time hunters were best dmg was with 2 major “positive” bugs on pets = Scorpions and later Wind serpents… now FIXED
Also… 1 more thing…
BLIZZ, you dont know what to do with hunters…? Just go and copy paste Guild Wars 2 rangers in some way to WoW SoD as you did with soooo many things for retail wow over couple of years…
that way you can perhaps make your game better past 2009.
Thanks!