I don’t post often in the blizzard forums but I’ve played the game since launch and I wanted to give feedback on a continued mistake made around the idea of melee hunters.
First off to clarify when I say melee hunter I’m talking about hunter that does 85% or more of it’s damage from in your face Melee (slap) abilities as well as traps.
I play melee hunter in Classic Hardcore and my core (melee) skills are:
Raptor Strike
Mongoose Bite
Wing Clip
Other than those melee skills we have our core damaging trap skills:
Immolation Trap
Explosive Trap
Buffs or effects to help augment your DPS:
Dragon Breath Chili
Shadow Oil
Frost Oil
Elixir of Mongoose
Elixir of Giants
Winterfall Firewater
Songflower
World Buffs
Core Enchants:
Crusader +100 strength is 100 AP for those face slapping melee strikes
I call my hunter a “Hybrid / Melee” hunter because I do allow the use of serpent sting as a pulling mechanism and a dot. So on a dps breakout the only ranged dps you will see in Recount is the serpent sting dot.
As a melee hunter Mongoose bite can only be used after you dodge an attack. My current hunter’s Dodge percentage without Aspect of the Monkey is 13.84%. Not a bad dodge rate but when tanking up mobs , which I do frequently in group play and solo, I will always use Aspect of the Monkey which increases my dodge by 13% bringing it to 26.84%. With Monkey up I proc Mongoose bite very frequently and it becomes a decent portion of my damage.
Pet Management
As a melee hunter you use your pets a little differently than regular hunter. You want your pet to tank up in certain situations and in others you will be performing the role of tank to proc those Mongoose bites. It’s necessary to have a macro that turns your pets growl on and cower off when you want the pet to tank. You will also need a macro to turn growl off and cower on in those situations where you quickly want your pet to drop threat.
Example Combat scenarios:
In a 2 mob pull you can have your pet aggro maybe one mob while you hold threat on another to get Mongoose procs to use on the primary dps target.
In a 3 mob pull you can have your pet get threat on 2 mobs if you want and keep it that way by utilizing disengage to drop threat. However if you gear is good enough you can simply let the pet hold threat on 1 mob and you will get even more Mongoose procs as 2 mobs will be focusing you.
The point of all of this is that if Blizzard wants to successfully implement a Melee Hunter (A hunter whose primary dps comes from melee-in-close-range abilities) a couple of things to consider are:
Will mongoose be only proc off of a Dodge?
If so the newly implemented Rune “Aspect of the Lion” is a complete waste for a melee hunter as he will want to be in Monkey Aspect to proc Mongoose and cannot utilize the Aspect of the Lion (10% stat increase). This is a clear oversight IMO by blizzard. Turtle wow also made the same mistake here but placing a new aspect into the game that boosts the flat dps of a melee hunter but still didn’t take into account the fact that a melee hunter may want to run Monkey to mitigate damage or proc mongoose.
Will blizzard implement a gap closer for the melee hunter?
To really make a melee hunter viable for PvP they have to have a gap closer. In retail this is very successfully accomplished with “Harpoon”. I strongly suggest that a Rune: Harpoon be added to the game.
The flanking strike issue
Flanking strike: You and your pet deal simultaneous instant 100% melee damage. Afterward, your Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike deal 10% increased damage for 10 sec, stacking up to 3 times. Raptor Strike has a 20% chance to reset the cooldown on Flanking Strike. As you can read from the tooltip Mongoose Bite damage is increased for 10 seconds but this is pretty useless if you are running Aspect of the Lion. Which, TBH, you probably shouldn’t if you really want to maximum the use of Mongoose bite.
Outside of these points to have a Melee hunter class that feels different than a normal hunter that has a more unique playstyle requires some thought. The class will need some more close range abilities that synergize with existing skills or Runes. So far from what I have seen with Runes from Season of Discovery this has not been done. A melee based hunter needs more work IMO currently. Aspect of the Lion should be changed to just be a skill NOT an aspect. Harpoon needs to be implemented. More synergy between skills needs to be worked out.
I could see survival and bm both have options for tanking, since survival has talents that actually feel tanker like (deterrence as well as parry an hp boosting talents), while bm has options for your pet to get stronger an you have the rune that buffs up the pet more an making the growl ability an actual taunt. The two issues is that survival does not have a taunt (distract shot is high theat not a taunt right now) yet has better control of the target to position, while bm has worse positioning via the pet yet has a taunt.
Now as a hunter tank you could use your pet to gather an off tank adds in a fight.
I disagree, I think it needs to take a sharp departure from where it is on retail.
SoD should not be putting retail classes into classic.
It should be about creating an entirely different experience utilising the assets and systems that exist within classic.
If mage got away having specs that cast literally 1 spell on raid encounters, we can add 2-3 mechanics in that make melee hunter viable.
Mongoose bite damage is mediocre at best. It doesn’t scale, it’s just a flat amount of damage no matter if you’re using a 2h, 1h, or disarmed. Rank 4 mongoose bite only deals 115 damage BEFORE you factor in armor.
We don’t know what other runes we’ll be getting. But Aspect of the Lion does give the hunter 20% stat boost. Which translates to bigger raptor strikes, auto attacks, flanking strikes, more crit, and more pet damage if pets are truly scaling.
One thing people may have missed about raptor strike in SoD is that they lowered the CD to 3 seconds from 6. Raptor strike is now also a instant attack instead of next attack. This means raptor strike wont be eating your next auto attack. You’ll be getting twice as much raptor strikes and auto attacks than you usually would in classic.
Sure the spec suffers from the lack of gapclosers, but enh shamans have to run up to their targets and frost shock them to melee. Same goes for rets. SV will have to do the same with conc shot and pet stuns.
SoD melee hunter is turning out pretty sweet imo. You can either go full BM/SV or SV/BM. You’ll be in melee fighting with your pet and getting those sweet flanking strikes resets.
So actually at that level frost shock does more damage than flame shock, and since lava burst only needs the dot up from flame shock to auto-crit (the dot lasts 12 seconds baseline) alternating between frost and flame shocks would be better atleast at level 25. Also it does not seem lava burst consumes the flame shock dot to do the auto crit.
…Why would Blizzard add a gap closer for melee hunters in Classic…
It has one it’s called concussion shot… Or boar with charge…
Don’t get me wrong I love melee hunter I’m one of the idiots in retail that mained Melee hunter since it went live in Legion. But realistically a melee hunter doesn’t need a gap closer because you have tons of tools as a hunter in classic.
In short no don’t give hunters a gap closer in SoD they already have enough in their kits.
A gap closer? I don’t think you understand what a gap closer does for a MELEE class.
Melee hunter.
MELEE which means: “Abilities that are executed within MELEE Range”
So what? You are going to send your boar in and just hoof it on in on foot. As if the enemy will just stand there after the boar charge (Charges an enemy, immobilizes it for 1 sec) completes. As if you can just magically glide in after a full 1 sec. Any skilled player could easily out range your with this so called “Gap Closer” which is not a gap closer at all.
Concussive shot? Same thing. Sure it slows the target but does it stop them from executing their abilties? No.
Let us say I want to close on a mage and I execute this amazing, incredible, CONCUSSIVE SHOT. What do you think the Mage will do. First off He’ll laugh at you. Then as you try to even “CLOSE THE GAP”… he’ll probably laugh some more. Even if you get within 3 steps he could just nova you. God forbid you got into melee range and he actually had to blink. Whoah.
Melee Gap Closers / openers:
Warrior >> CHARGE
Rogue >> Stealth Opener
Kitty (feral) >> Stealth Opener
Bear (feral) >> Charge
All of which, leave you standing right next to your target.
Seriously not sure what game your are playing but you make my point. People do not understand what a MELEE hunter should entail.
This is why I do not post on forums. The level of intelligence… SMH
The mage will come to you to stand in your deadzone. He will do most of the gap closing for you in this case, because a mage does not want to be shot at. Something that those other melee classes can’t really do very well, that’s why mages tend kite them and kill them from range. So as a hunter you will always have that option to still shoot people if you can’t get to them. Throw in a bestial wrath and your pet will be making quick work of that mage before you even get to raptor strike.
from my understanding, raptor strike is being reduced to a 3 sec cooldown and traps will be useable in combat, so a fair amount of damage will come from those 2 things. harpoon would be nice, a would also love to see a rune allowing shield use and some basic shield skill, maybe opening up mongoose use after a dodge or block. and you still have counter attack off of a parry.
THing is that most of those classes are basically melee without much range choice. or a class that is melee locked in a form that they have to break to use thier ranged abilities. Hunter does not have this even though you are a melee hunter, the moment they try and kite/create a gap on you the only thing you will need to deal with is the wait for the enemy to get outside the deadzone. You can use all of your normal ranged abilties while they are outside of melee range that could either force them back into melee range or keep pressure on them.
Would love to see melee hunter being viable, but based on hunters’ talent, it would most definitely require some huge change and the currently shown runes simply dont do enough for a melee hunter.
