I thought I’d take it upon myself to make a list of all the times I was felt grieved by Blizzard for their treatment of the Hunter class in recent memory.
They removed double tap and did not address why
Hunters do not bring special utility to raids
Marksmanship hunter tier set does not provide DPS benefit in arena season 1 Dragonflight
Hunter survivability is limited and nerfed (Pet leech)
Lone Wolf does not let hunter utilize versions of pet utility such as Intimidation, Master’s Call, and Roar of Sacrifice
Pets die easily to cleave in Season 1 Dragonflight arena
Quivers that were promised were not implemented
PVE existence hinges on a low drop-rate bow from final boss of first raid tier of Dragonflight
Replacing Resonating Arrow with a joke of a button that provides an area of effect that is smaller and doesn’t apply if an opponent steps out of it
We have to use ugly pets, such as Raptors, Clefthoofs, Hyenas, for their family effects instead of more visually appealing pets, such as Cats
Please comment your thoughts below. I’d love to add to the list.
Addend:
7 February 2023: 5% buff to hunter damage; 15% buff to Aimed shot and Rapid Fire in PvP; BM 4 set nerf and unerring vision nerf in PvP
This owl vision thing got put in late beta. Expect this to get some use in the next raid since they are still in design phase. Theres no way they are letting this stupid idea go without shoving down our throat in some fight where it is gonna be needed just to say…theres your utility you whiny pricks
The frustrating thing for me is I was Marksmen like many others prior to them taking away Double Tap and all of my gear was built towards Marksmen (Mastery/Crit gear). Now that they took Double Tap away, and after conducting some research online, Marksmen can still kind of do some heavy damage in rated battlegrounds but it’s more optimal with haste gear now, or so I’ve read. Even then, if I wanted to go beast mastery, same thing applies, it’s more optimal with haste gear and I am having to start all over with my gear build because of the changes made. If anything, I feel like we should have had the opportunity to exchange all the hard-earned gear we gathered for a spec that is no longer viable using said gear. We basically wasted a lot of time to acquire gear for a build that they butchered with no rhyme or reason other than people complaining about it. Even then, Rogues, Shamans, and Warriors still have huge amounts of burst but yet…hunters cannot because it makes us broken? Sorry I don’t see the logic in that. Any decent PVP player would pop a CD to live through the Double Tap burst and it would happen to me more times than I would 1 shot someone with Double Tap and, to be fair, if you did get 1 shot by Double Tap you deserved it. Any seasoned PVP player should see it coming from a mile away. I’m in a bad situation where I’ve considered quitting the game altogether. Hunters bring nothing to the table raid group wise and there is nothing really unique about our class that brings value except that we get a cool pet and even then, the pets were nerfed and butchered because “they were too broken”. If I sign up for an RBG as MM or BM, I usually don’t get taken because there are much better classes to bring along. I can still pump out numbers as MM in RBG’s but not like I used too, however, it’s at least enough to hang and people who give me the chance in RBG’s do see that. In arena and solo shuffle my rating plummeted as BM or MM but only because I do not have the proper gear to perform optimally. Where’s my motivation to continue playing? It’s just not there.
Multishot not being BASELINE (this is the clearest insult imo)
endless gap closers given to melee, xpac after xpac, and having our own kit removed and reduced (xplosive trap gone, post haste half its original duration, cheetah dead, pack deleted)
Improved and overpowered snares given to everyone on every ability and requiring no thought at all (should I save this for after he disengages/Master’s Calls? Lol no just spam that sh*t!!!)
defences against melee reduced xpac after xpac (Wild protector, aspect of the monkey, etc)
the 20+ bugs tied to talents, skills, and abilities that have been reported and unaddressed since DF beta.
RIDICULOUS self-healing given to just about every other class
SV and BM mastery’s being garbage.
we lost out big on the covenant lottery meaning their failure at hunter design last xpac carries forward and we not only get stuck with utterly useless garbage, but have to at the same time deal with ridiculously overpowered abilities like Spear, Grabby hands, Mind Games, and The Hunt, which do damage while offering so much utility/survivability/gapclosing
traps are nowvisible to enemies for no reason
trap activation radius is still so small that a DH can GLIDE over a trap without springing it…
Explosive trap being effectively DELETED from pvp by making it a choice node with intimidation…
Traps getting 0 (ZERO) quality of life improvements for YEARS when other classes get IDIOTproof AOE CC and STILL complain that they are somehow HARDER to use (go on the warrior/pvp forum and see how hard warriors claim it is to land a Spear of Brainless Idiotproof Free-win)
some abilities in both the Hunter and Spec trees and Honor Talents that are soooo undertuned that they functionally do nothing (stampede, Call of the Wild, Dire beast: Basilisk/Hawk, Amoc etc etc etc etc)
having to choose to spend points on abilities when other classes get the same or similar abilities free, and instead spend points to customise and improve those abilities.
SV having so many WFbomb talents in their tree and yet taking any or all of them does NOT meaningfully impact their usage at ALL.
BM still chained to a slot machine for Barbed procs when none of us want it as the sole basis of our spec (and have said as much since the beta build it was revealed in).
MM having so little choice in its tree.
Steel trap being made a top tier talent despite being a utility spell (should be tier 2 at most).
Serpent sting being top tier instead of, as its currently tuned damagewise, tier 2/3.
Turtle still having so many bugs and exceptions that have existed since it was introduced, and the list only seeming to grow every xpac.
Survival being comparatively less survivable with each passing expac.
Pets still being stuck in the stone ages (make the skins purely cosmetic. Now. Yesterday. What is wrong with you.)
Animal companion being sooooooooo RIDICULOUSLY buggy in multitarget fights, especially BGs and WPVP where it will just go off and decide to do its only thing and be COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE.
Not being able to avoid using Animal companion because you would be gimping your already laughable damage in pvp.
An actually useful Mend Pet that makes your pet actually survive CLEAVE not only needs 2 whole points, but ALSO cant be used in BGs or SS with Spriests or Afflocks in them. (boost the heal to 2 pt level as base and have the talent be % chance to cleanse only).
No quivers meaning we have only the Legion artifact mogs to chose from, STILL.
Leech being so readily available to everyone but specifically dead to us.
Master’s call still bugged and not freeing us from several abilities and effects.
Tar trap keeping us in combat.
Flare being stuck in the stone age - if all you want it to do is occasionally flare out a rogue who is dumb enough to be caught out, and who still has 3 damn seconds to step to you anyway, then why is its cooldown so long? Or its AOE so small? And why does it, in essence, offer no benefit at all to flaring out a rogue?
Dire Beast: Basilisk was originally area denial and huge damage to anyone dumb enough to try and facetank it, but atm hits for 5k single target on a 2 min CD, starts from OUT of melee range and COSTS 60 focus… LMFAO
Bursting shot is useless 50% of the time if you are playing with ANY kind of lag against a moving target (like, say, anyone who is cursed with living outside of the US)
Hunter’s Mark being stuck in the stone age. The duration and range worked in the old days, but now with melee mobility, cloak having such a short CD, and the post-stealth grace period it is no longer the death sentence it once was.
I feel like I could go through our entire toolkit and say why it has not kept pace with other classes and abilities, Damage and survivability tuning, and the wider game as a whole, but I feel like it would serve to do nothing me than to get me angry and frustrated. You know, like everytime I log on into Arms. Or Assassination. Or DH. Or UH. Or any other mongo spec that can make mistake after mistake when 1 mistake from us means death, if not in a global, then as soon as we run through our all our numerous and overpowered defensives. You know, the ones that can turn a fight around? And not just lead to a slow death via attrition? Or a long chase against an opponent who was given more mobility and ranged snares and CC than you for… no apparent reason? (lolololololol)
Welp, I wrote a post on the CC: Let's talk hunter
It’s gonna get ignored but at least it’s there.
I joined the council to talk about PvP and Classic and didn’t want to bring the class I play into it but I can’t stand this anymore.
Hunters have lost their niche or every other class has evolved far beyond. On top of what was already said the amount of CC in pvp is over the top crazy.
Think ima step away once my sub runs out and take a loooong break.
Serpent Sting at the bottom of the tree to provide ONLY a DoT
Lackluster heal that can be buffed by FOUR (!!) talents points to only be SLIGHTLY less bad.
FD with any latency is hokey as heck
Disengage can no longer be a quick spin and cast because it takes the relative position of server location and not client so you go shooting off in random directions with any latency over 25ms
Bursting Shot oddities
Weird filler talents that are basically just noob traps cough Hunter’s Avoidance…
Pet autocasts not autocasting so you have to macro abilities just for base functionality
Pigeonholed into two MANDATORY PvP talents across all three specs
Top of MM tree is still VERY heavy.
Two point nodes gating two point nodes
Three point nodes existing (for any class)
AoE talents in MM tree still best for ST build?
Improved Killshot existing. Why? It should be baseline because you HAVE to take it.
Too many skills that are a chance of a chance to proc. I’m looking at you, Windrunner’s Guidance
TOO MANY THINGS TIED TO AIMED SHOT
Tar Trap radius at 8 yards, and unimprovable with Improved Traps (unlike improved totems)
I think any skill that you ABSOLUTELY have to take should be baseline. The trees should enhance or replace those skills, and then add meaningful choices to flesh out your kit. For example… Survival of the Fittest as a talent is paint-eating dumb. You HAVE to take it in all content. On the other hand, the choice node below it is a good choice depending on what you’re doing (sort of). Either the skill lasts longer and gets a shorter CD OR it reduces more damage for the same CD. That’s a meaningful choice.
I’d like to add that the class has a few GLARING bugs on feign death not clearing dots or giving the shield (at least visually), and iron trap not stopping charge effects in pvp at all.
Pets also are less responsive this expansion and get bugged out regularly especially when jumping off platforms.
I would like to add killshot without proc, feels garbage in PvE and PvP. And most times is at the same damage, often times less, of an arcane shot with proc from aimed shot or tier which to me for an “execute” ability makes no sense.
For PvP - I went around to some melee toons I have and compared their kit to hunter, since melee are quite numerous in PvP. Our toolkit is outmatched by almost everything, their big CDs will come off of cooldown before our defensives will. The gap closers are numerous and at times shorter CD than what our gap creating abilities are. And most have healing effects that happen more often than our 2 minute (less with focus spent) 30% heal. Other casters its the same thing, their defensives are on a shorter CD, their offensive CDs are also typically shorter.
For PvE -
To me it seems we suffer more than others in terms of dealing with unavoidable damage, we bring next to 0 utility for the group, besides lust, which other classes can lust and have better toolkits/damage profiles. And overall have lackluster damage
We are in a serious need of a rework/overhaul for class and spec trees. Hunter is the only class that is almost always at the bottom in terms of PvP and PvE, go back and look at m+ and raid logs going back years, hunter is consistently (besides a rare few outliers like survival at the end of last xpac) at the bottom or all 3 specs hover around there.
Thank you for atleast putting the effort into putting it out there. The other person who I have seen, Maizou, that is a CC member is absolutely cluessless as to how hunter works from what I have seen. Hopefully this will help get some attention to the class and issues we are having, if it does not then I’m unsure what will unless every hunter cancels their sub to the game ( doubt they will, just re-roll). But after seeing the feedback provided in the notes for 10.0.7 and for ret pallys which I am thankful for ret really did need some help, but then seeing the “changes” we got… It is a sucker punch. Again, thank you for trying!
1 - Season 3 Shadowlands BM tier set. Us throughout ptr, “hey this tier set adds absolutely nothing to aoe while sv is getting + 80% to an uncapped aoe, can we get some aoe?” crickets until season 3 hit at which point our m+ numbers dropped and a dev came to our forum to promise that despite us running out of time, they were totally gonna fix our aoe. After several weeks, they did… by extending our beast cleave window by six seconds, meaning our pathetic aoe could be pathetic for longer.
2 - Sentinel owl. hunters across the player spectrum, from WF raiders to multi-glads to World Quest Wendies, again and again in the beta thread: hunter has no relevant raid utility and limited survivability. we haven’t really been compensated for the loss of our SL conduits. our single heal isn’t really much help against sustained rot damage which is the raid/high key MO these days. the devs: “we totally hear you! anyway here’s sentinel owl, which solves 0 of these problems. You may also have one more single heal on a very long CD, locked to a single pet, so RIP group bloodlusters lol. We are so on the ball.”
3 - hunter family ability locking. we asked in beta why we can’t choose pet families. watermist put up a really thoughtful and detailed post on the community council forums. the response? we can’t choose pet families because it might upset arena players who won’t immediately be able to tell whether your pet has fortitude of the bear or master’s call and might have to gasp improvise.
4 - the double tap fiasco. i’ve already nerd-raged about this across the forums but honestly, the absolute refusal to engage or explain themselves just comes across as spiteful. really? we’re not even worth a single one-sentence explanation in the patch notes? honestly i get it if they they were scared of hunters being mean to them on the internet (valid tbh, nobody likes being the lightning rod for decisions that are unpopular with customers) but they couldn’t even drop a note to mispelled on the community council forums or stick an explanation in the patch notes? now we’ve got pve hunters blaming pvp hunters and pvp hunters getting mad because they’re tired of being blamed for something that disproportionately damages them and nobody’s happy, except i guess that one bad unholy DK player who got ganked in a bg and spent all of ptr whining about it.
OMG, bring this guy an award.
Unfortunately the community folks do a better job than Blizzard’s devs. Knowing the latest Blizzard attitudes she will see this and not do anything because they think they are better than their customers
