I want a new main and Im undecided between paladin/shaman and hunter.
I want to do high m+ and 2v2 and bgs. I dont like hunter mogs but rest of class is interesting.
Hunters good, its even getting some form of utility in next season which is somewhat of a positive.
Any class is worth maining if you love it however.
Id tell you to go shaman, but im bias
Hunter is fun and have few viable comp
This is my second season as hunter main and iâm having a lot of fun
currently playing on 2.3 mmr lobbies in 3s and 2.1 mm in shuff
You welcome to join my discord community trying to recruit players related to pvp
discord.gg/tdVQpYXk
Go for it and play hunter. You wont get bored for a long time. All specs are fun to play and if you go MM in bgs you will feel like God. Wpvp is super fun as well just gank people 24/7 and run away if it does not go your way. All specs are good in 2s but surv is still king. Best comp for hunter is rdruid.
Iâd say any class will work âlong termâ, depending on what you are personally looking for in a class, since they all work in those game modes. 
Of course if you mean âflavour of the monthâ or âmetaâ, then itâs a different thing⌠but then again you said âlong termâ, which obviously isnât a FotM question.
The 3 mentioned classes, all have completely different play styles⌠so you need to ask yourself, âwhat do you see as a class you could enjoy for a long time?â.
Paladin is purely about âkilling as fast as possibleâ through buffs, and excel at staying alive. And it has all 3 roles. Personally I hate how boring paladin is in PvP, but in PvE content I think itâs incredibly fun. I just personally need a class to have more CC for it to be enjoyable. 
Shaman has a crap ton of CC, utility and self-healing, and I personally LOVE it in PvP as my 2nd favourite class in the game. You pretty much have full control over your opponent through its CC spells, and it has some really unique spells like Counterstrike Totem, which is great for killing âamateurâ players. Plus, it has both a melee and ranged spec, so you can swap if you like both plays styles.
Hunter is PURELY a DPS class (and itâs my personal main atm). What I personally love most about Hunter is itâs utility, CC, and high skill ceiling⌠Hunter has VERY low self-healing, and HAS to use utility to stay alive⌠which makes it hard to play in PvP until you have learned how to use its CC properly. But once you learn it, you feel really good. In PvE though, Hunter excels as a solo class, since your pet is a mini tank.
So all in all. They are all VERY different in how they play⌠And the only one who knows âwhich one is best long termâ, is you depending on your preference in play style.
Decision tree.
Do you like playing it? >>> Yes >>> Then do so.
Do you prefer to play other classes? >>> Yes >>> Choose that instead.
We canât tell the future or what youâd prefer.
2 Likes
as a hunter main since wotlk i say no the way hunter have been treated this xpac anyway is bad. Terrible talent treeâs with some of the worst capstone skill out of any class/spec we are mediocre at best across all specs mm can blast but itâs super rng dependent and itâs just not fun to have your damage set to a dice roll
1 Like
Depends, if youâre a player that wants to do challenging content like Mythic Raiding and high end M+, no. I would say Hunter is probably one of the worst classes to main in the game.
If youâre a casual /PvP player then yeah, I mean, play what you like who cares.
It purely just depends what he means by âhighâ m+. For some people 10s are high, for some 20s are high, for some 30s. His current character is doing 16s and for that and above hunter is more than fine of course. Same with mythic raiding - hunters are like the second most common class in mythic raiding, itâs not like itâs a bad class to main for that, especially now carrying a semi-mandatory raid debuff.
Unless you are going for world first or certainly going for 0.1% m+ title, then hunter is absolutely more than fine. And theres a chance that even if going for the above it will be fine too.
Hunters are a popular class. So are DPS warriors and Ret Paladins. Doesnât mean they are a good class.
20s is not high keys.
Tbh, any one that writes a post like this, probably isnât doing any challenging content and should just play what they like.
Which is exactly my point. 20 might not be high to you, but to some that is high. Anybody whose pushing high keys in the actual sense is not going to ask what to play on a wow forum.
99.9% of people who ask on these forums, the answer is always yes hunter is more than fine.
My point is, why learn Hunter. He might be a noob now but maybe in 6 months he wants to do high content, and now heâs spent 6 months learning Hunter when he couldâve learned any Warlock spec, any Mage spec, or another class that is almost always meta or guaranteed raid spot.
The problem is that far too many players use this as a yardstick to gauge the viability of a class, which is ridiculous. Play the class you enjoy the most. I was a die-hard BM from WotLK to Legion and I remember lots of people questioning my choice of spec in WotLK, but I made it work because I found it fun to play and put in the effort.
1 Like
Because he said he finds it interesting?
Hunter DOES now have a guaranteed raid spot. This whole guaranteed raid spot talk is absolutely irrelevant anyway, unless you are playing in echo, which I doubt he is, if you play well enough youâll be in the raid. Iâve seen world 1k guilds kill sark without monk debuffs and dh debuffs, itâs not like every guild in the world is running around with the absolute perfectly ideal raid comp permanently. Itâs incredibly stupid.
As for m+, hunter is probably just as frequently meta as the majority of the other specs. 2 out of the 4 last seasons hunter was excellent remember.
3 Likes
Youâre replying to a dude who in another thread thinks this season is easy because the cutoff is 300 points higher than last season.
Some people are just disconnected from reality / common sense. Like you said, most guilds just want bodies to fill slots, the class is almost irrelevant.
2 Likes
Hunters honestly need a better oh crap button or atleast reduced CD on the ones we already have (turtle/exhilaration).
20s are certainly higher than people give credit for. People forget that only 20% of people got AOTC this tier, and fewer have unlocked all their portals.
No matter what the people who are regularly clearing 25+ keys think. A +20 is a high key so I would say in the vast majority of cases, any class is fine to main.
Iâm a Beast Master Hunter main since december 2021.
The class is indeed popular, in open-world PvE content you can do almost everything alone (Iâll admit I donât know the MM spec by heart, and the Survival spec does not click with me, I want a an-school D&D Ranger, so distance and pets).
The thing is, the class and all the specs are very easy to start with, but actually getting good and pulling your weight in M+ or Raid content is much harder than it looks (before people bash me, I know that my highest M+ key at the moment is a +19, itâs not because I did not get accepted in 20-24, but those attempts resulted in my little paper-thin self being the last one alive rezzing the healer with engi gadgets before everyone left ⌠the joys of PUGhell-life).
Easy to learn, hard to master, able to do everything in open-world PvE without too much difficulty, needs a very high knowledge and reactivity in end-game content to actually pull your own weight.
If you like the idea of always moving around and being a âsupport DPSâ with comparatively fewer group-wide utilities, go for it.
Be warned that the DPS segment is really overcrowded though, when I get out my Tanks or Healers I get accepted in anything in less than a minute (even if I donât really know how to play them well), and people are much more forgiving when I tell them âmy Holy Priest is not my main, Iâll probably make mistakesâ, while the Hunter is always blamed for weird pulls (your pets pulled man) while that particular bug was fixed during Legion and the general opinion is ânoob classâ (might be true at the start, quite the opposite in endgame content).
2 Likes
Most classes are viable long term, unless you decide to start running +30 keys, if you like your hunter, keep at it 
Iâd say that for running +30 keys, a premade group with Voice Coms, players that know each other and their respective playstyles, and a choice of classes that complement each other is the only way to go âŚ
I managed, in Season 1 DF and Season 3 & 4 SL, to go up to 22, 23 and 25 (respectively and in order) in pure PUGhell without voice coms, and with players that really did not know what they were doing (no strats, no idea of the routes ⌠soloing the Postmaster in the Tazaveshâs Market in a +24 because I was the last one alive and I knew I could finish him before rezzing the healer with my trusty gnome knife) is the biggest problem, every class, spec and group composition can do very high level keystones, if and only if communication, knowledge, strategy, tactics and synergies are used.
In pure PickUpGroup with not even a reply to my âhelloâ when I get accepted in a group, itâs simply not possible to go above 19~21, to the point that I completely stopped even trying.
I got my S1 and S2 mounts, the title for the 2500 M+ score both seasons, most of the gear I was searching for (never got the BiS nor a shoulder piece above iLVL 437 though), all that with having to do the job of two or three people (plus some affixes where I can do absolutely nothing besides grind my teeth, gird my loins and do as much damage as possible like the +7 one from this week), soooo âŚ
The Hunter class and all three specs are definitively viable at what can be considered âmedium-high levelâ keystones (depending on the point of view), and I managed to hold my own in Heroic Raiding in S1 (got the Neltharax pre-nerf) for my very first try in raids (not interested anymore, too long and stressful for me), while reading that Hunters are now in demand for Raiding, and open-world PvE is still the easiest part of the game : I still havenât managed to solo the Ancient Zaqualis in the Zaralek Cavern, mostly because the class truly lacks in efficient defensive and self-healing, but I can, and usually do, manage to do the âgroup world questsâ alone without problems, even the new one in the Emerald Dream ⌠I had to disengage and wait for that flame DoT to burn out (again, no dispel, no remove curse, little self-healing and long cooldowns on defensives) before going back at it, and thatâs because I was surprised by that mechanic, a timely use of my Turtle Shell would have prevented that problem.
It boils down to this : unless aiming to very high endgame level content, you can play anything provided you actually enjoy it.
For very high endgame content, youâll need to find good people with good communication, knowledge, and the works to make it work.
Back to the very title of this thread before I leave : a hunter of any spec is by definition a long term commitment, simply because while itâs easy to start, it gets harder and harder to pull your weight the higher you reach, the built-in âflawsâ of the class and specs wonât allow you a single mistake, but experience, knowledge, muscle memory, reflexes will help you avoid said mistakes ⌠reaching that point will take time !
Personnal anecdote : it took me less than two months, starting from level 1 in the tutorial, to reach max level and start doing Torghast, Zereth Mortis rares and M+ dungeons.
Then it took me most of the next year to actually get to the point to be called âThe Carry Manâ by my ex-guildies, after they expelled me from the guild for ânot being competitive enoughâ and begging me to come back when they saw my scores and logs (all of them public by default) after learning all the intricacies of my chosen spec.
You will not, ever start as an exceptionnal hunter able to do +30âs keystones and Mythic Raids, getting to that point takes a lot of practice and ingame time actually doing things (and failing a lot of times).
1 Like