8.3 Class Changes

I was just browsing the upcoming changes on WoWhead and noticed a big empty spot for hunters. Has there seriously been no changes for the class? Maybe I was looking at an old build?

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I think devs have mostly given up on BFA and are gearing towards SL to hopefully fix the game. Like they’ve done with past xpacs.

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Hunter isn’t a top 3 or bottom 3 performer, so they don’t need any numbers changes. It’s also median in popularity at the top end raiding.

Functional play style are xpac to xpac changes.

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Watch preach video on hunters going into 8.3 for mythic prog.

If I recall correctly, he mentioned dps-wise they’re fine. Non-top end guilds aren’t going to use them much but everyone else it’s fine. The major thing is that they just don’t really bring any utility. Would be nice if they addressed that.

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Yes, you’re right. He said dps is pretty much balanced, they just don’t have any utility that puts them ahead of any other class. I was mostly hoping they might have been able to do something for Marksmanship but it is awfully late in the expansion to expect anything there.

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Which is fine, but 99.99% of raiders aren’t going to be in a position where it matters. People put too much weight on these .01% raiders going for world firsts.

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Yeah i’m speaking from a MM hunters perspective. It’s not gonna be a great time for us. The MM channel in the hunter discord is literally a meme now its sad

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not true shadowlands is bfa 2.0.

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Professional endorsement is a huge motivation for consumerism. You want to use what the pros use. You want to compete how the pros do. It might not matter most of the time anyway, but you know you can’t go wrong with something the pros count on.

Why settle for something less?

It hasn’t been a great time this entire expansion, AND for Legion. So far this is two going on three expansion cycles. I blame it on MeleeCraft more than anything else, as I’m sensible enough to understand that this goes beyond the problem for any one ranged class.

And boy, can we not wait or what to be proven wrong when the alpha builds are ready in a few months?

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I mean in that video you’ll notice he didn’t mention a number of specs. I think he only really mentioned hunters because it tied in to the story about his RL.

Hunter damage will still be fine, I think you could argue that they technically weren’t the most ideal class for the current raid tier except for maybe redirects on Orgo and Binding Shot (maybe?) on Azshara.

Imagine taking class advice from preach or bellular.

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Where did I mention bellular? Also preach makes great points about content and classes and if you’re trying to hardcore raid seeing as he’s credible. It’s why he’s on methods team. I know its a trend to hate people for no reason though so whatever you say.

will you still be doing m+ for your rng lootbox on tuesday for gear upgrades?..yep

will you sitll be doing your lfr/n/h raids since mythic is to hard for most people?..yep.

its the same games because you will be doing the exact same thing in shadowlands that you are doing now.

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I’m loathe to listen to whatever Preach has to say about Hunters because he championed the whole “the Hunter is a stagnant class that needs to be radically modernised” attitude that led to the Legion disaster. You know, the same change-for-the-sake-of-chamge bullcrap you hear from the likes of Naham on the forums where apparently Hunters are an invalid class if they don’t get remade every expansion, regardless of such trivial matters as whether Hunters enjoy the class.

On the plus side, he did really like ranged Survival and he was willing to call out what a dumpster fire Legion Survival was.

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That’s why my language was sarcastic. “I can’t wait to be proven wrong” when I know I probably won’t be proven wrong that SL would be BFA 2.0. Even still, that won’t stop me from reading the alpha builds at my earliest con-VEEN-ience. >8 //

Starting in middle 2015, I was one of the new kids on the block and the Hunter class was solidly legit before Legion. As I was one of the “modern” Hunters, the class didn’t need modernization. I understand that Legion was supposed to be a big deal because of the artifact weapons and how they were supposed to accentuate the class/specs, but Survival really needed a weapon that can be characterized by the wilderness itself. I still believe that Thas’dorah should have been given to Survival, and Blizzard should have “modernized” that spec by actually making the traps, enhanced effects, and unique SV attacks important.

I still don’t know how they did it with Demo and not Survival. They did a great job with the entire Warlock class. Each lock spec had its own identity whilst they all remained ranged for a ranged class, with the bonus of being able to withstand melee(at the cost of mobility). I bet I could modernize RSV into a package that John J. Rambo would give two thumbs up.

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They didn’t.

Demo got screwed almost as badly as Survival. Like Survival, it was gutted in 6.2 (although unlike Survival they were actually open about why they were gutting it: they literally said they didn’t want people to play it). In Legion it got reworked from the ground-up. It was a disaster; a sad joke of a spec that was bad on paper and even worse in practice. Whereas before Legion you would have to manage your resources and enter Metamorphosis, something that was both awesome-looking and awesome to play, in Legion you spent the entire time summoning and buffing imps. There was a lot of very jusified outcry on the forums and the spec was one of the least-played in the game for a long time. I know someone who plays Warlock religiously and has many rank 1 parses who quit for some time due to this development.

In BFA they remade it again. People like the new version; it flows well and looks cool enough. But I don’t see many people say it’s better than the MoP/WoD version and I still see people wishing for that version to come back all the time.

So it actually went through a pretty similar process to Survival. The only difference is you didn’t have a complete shifting of the intended audience to a group external to the class like you did with Survival which is what caused the community divide today.

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This goes back a long way in class history. The DS(Dem Sac)/Ruin build from TBC was when it started. Ever since, Demo-heavy builds were not welcome in the raiding scene. But I took it for granted that Warlock was always a class that was stupidly OP or stupidly UP: a joke class that was never considered seriously unless you are 1) top-50 hardcore, 2) European, 3) RPer, or 4) all of the above. As a NA Normie, I miss all those marks.

I considered it that Blizzard deliberately failed to make both the old and new Demo execute well, because I knew that at least 12 or 13 years in. I apologize for the cynicism. There was a time when I used to legitimately care about the warlock status quo. Only one problem that I noticed was that the advent of demon hunters had to make Demo change for the better, or worse. There can’t be two “Illidans” among classes?

It’s still an excuse for Blizzard not to do both classes what they ought to have, but it’s all I knew.

I wonder, what ever happened to the “bring the player and not the class” design philosophy? (Rhetorical)

I hope to see the Hunter class get some sort of changes that would give groups a reason to want hunters on their M+ teams, raids and PvP teams. Right now, there is no reason to bring along a hunter friend, unless they are your friend.

It’s a bummer to see no utility changes or reassurances from the Design team that Hunters will be desired for teams. I suppose I’ll have to wait for SL Beta to see what’s in store for us.

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Yeah there doesn’t seem to be any changes at all. I don’t particularly mind, the only change I want is dumb GCDs off my cooldowns, which isn’t going to happen.

Does anyone know what’s supposed to be so bad about Hunters in 8.3? I wish I had more detailed information. I saw Preach’s video and knowing that he doesn’t really play Hunter he’s not a good source for a thorough reasoning.

Lack of utility gets thrown around a lot, but I don’t see how a mobile ranged dps with a moving immunity and good movement skills can classify as having no utility. I don’t see how mages, druids, shamans or shadow priests have significantly better utility than Hunters (of course Warlocks do, but we don’t talk about them). So unless there’s specific mechanics that can only be countered with utility that every other class has and hunters don’t (which seems unlikely), the utility argument sounds kinda weak.

If it’s a dps issue it will most likely get a small buff a week or two after the raid launches, like usual. I would expect Hunters to be middle pack in terms of dps since that’s where we have been for a while.