I have made a second post that has been simplified and *probably* easier to implement into the game. This post here is more so addressing the issues melee hunter currently has.
I've also updated and changed my suggestions there, which I think will work better than the ones in here. (i'd delete this post but honestly idk how)
For ease I'd suggest reading the other
Okay so, melee orientated rune issues starting from the top. I’ll go further in depth of other issues after
-Catlike reflexes, reduces flanking by 50% which still doesn’t let us consistently maintain 3 stacks of the buff
-Hit and Run, cool however we’re already in melee range and resourcefulness is significantly better
-Cobra Slayer, 40% melee attack power sounds nice but hits a third of what Raptor Strike does despite both being 6s CD and Mongoose needing to be procced by a dodge which is inherently a 6% chance.
-Raptors Fury, now Raptor Strike is up to a 6s cooldown and Raptors Fury is still only a 15 second buff, with a 1/3 reset chance, we have a 10% chance of not resetting raptor strike twice in a row and gaining only a measly 10% damage buff to the second Raptor Strike
-Carve hasn’t really ever been used, even in AoE situations the Beast Mastery rune gave a similar amount if not more damage
-Melee Specialist, 30% chance to reset mongoose which we only have a 6% chance to proc, raptor is fine but is RNG, non scaling and un-fun (I would prefer it on an ability critting like exorcism honestly)
-Flanking Strike, previously, with 3s Raptor Strike we struggled to maintain 3 stacks and it’s very RNG reliant, now at 6s it’s not even worth taking especially compared to Kill Shot
-Dual Wield Spec, it would be nice if it did the same for mongoose but its fine as a rune.
Wyvern Strike- as a capstone ability it does not compare to Bestial Wrath and Trueshot Aura. It is simply too weak as it currently is, also chimera shot can refresh sting which is nice but forces weaving which died with Vanilla (and tbc ig)
Weird synergies and some suggestions
–With T.N.T. working from melee attack power, you’d assume this is aimed at melee (a survival trap spec perhaps) which is fine. Wyvern Strike requires the SV capstone ability, which is fine. However we need trap launcher to drop traps in combat to make use of TNT and the talents in the survival tree. Trap launcher is on the same slot as wyvern strike.
This makes wyvern strike a non-choice as traps (with resourcefulness too) have more support than wyvern strike.
-a suggestion to this would be make combat traps a baseline thing and keep trap throwing as a rune for the ranged hunters
–Mongoose bite working on enemy dodge is fine since its similar to overpower, the issue is it’s only a 6% proc chance (as thats what number of hits the enemies dodge) yet the datamined giantstalker set reduces that to 5%. The issue is, mongoose bite does 1/3 of the damage of a raptor strike, both have the same cooldown and Mongoose needs to be procced. Imagine if overpower hit less than a heroic strike, would warriors ever use it?
-my suggestion, have it work off ranged attack power as melee hunters still stack agility and have it allow us to use Counterattack. Have Cobra Slayer allow counterattack to also benefit from ranged attack power. This makes for some more buttons to press and a reason to go into survival
–TRUESHOT AURA, TSA is strong and being party based it’s basically mandatory for the nerd melee groups, as is windfury. This limits the other melee slots in a group to 3, making it a hard group to bargin for when we do less damage than a ranged hunter.
-my suggestion, have wyvern strikes DoT effect work similar to TBC’s expose weakness and have TSA a raidwide buff as ranged hunters don’t particularly benefit from melee buffs (a book called improved trueshot aura for eg.)
TL:DR, we dont use 7 of the 9 melee orientated runes, Mongoose bite is weak, Flanking strike is weak, 6s raptor doesn’t work anymore since stuff was based around 3s, we don’t provide anything to the raid compared to MM and the ranged runes are somehow better for melee than melee runes are. The survival tree doesn’t compete yet
I appreciate it’s early into the beta testing but evidently there’s a lot of issues. I’ve almost certainly missed some stuff I’d like to mention, I’ll more than likely post a reply to this with extras, hit me up in the hunter discord if you care to
Edit 1:
Me again, interesting but also sad to see there’s no other replies or engagement in here
The thought just popped into my head of potentially, limited to PTR, unlocking all the runes and letting us put them in any slot. I’m no game designer or dev, so idk how much hassle that would be
However that would allow us, and every other class who has gripes about rune positioning to build the builds we want to try and play. You know how min/max and efficient the wow community is- doing this would just surely figure out the best combination of runes
Of course if 2 runes are insanely strong together, have a method to where they don’t work in tandem- ‘does not stack with similar damage modifying runes’ for eg. or something similar to how the weapon skill rings and racials don’t stack.
Heck I don’t know. I just want the game to be fun
Edit 2:
Carve but its a beast cleave too- perhaps work the same way as flanking strike where both player and pet hit at the same time but this time in a cone in front.
I’d also like to see Cobra Strikes work on melee hit too, if we could take it - that would allow for a more pet focused melee hunter (like our boy rexxar)
Edit 3:
Mama Mia,
Mongoose = Overpower but worse
? = Taste for blood
Perhaps maybe trap damage or pet crit?