I was main hunter for many years, I asked blizzard countless times so that we could choose pets without being trapped in the family system, I always suffered against melee and also against caster, in my perception hunter is a “weaker” class for a long time.
In my last hunter games in the shadowlands prepatch, I noticed that practically all classes healed more than 500k per arena and I had to resort to a great effort with kiting and coordination to win. I decided to give up on the class, i was weaker, i couldn’t choose my pet… so theres no reason to be a hunter.
Hiting at 70 with my warrior I felt that this was my best decision.
I simply crush hunters without much effort, I see them suffering against all classes.
What is their purpose anyway?
Of course I’m aware that there are excellent hunter players who will definitely be gladiators, but it’s a small margin. I bet that in the representation of DF the hunters will have between 1 and 2% of representation in the pvp.
No, its not because they are “unpopular” or “unfun”, hunters are weak regardless bicmex or 2 or 3 names you bring here.
Almost every class gets better defensives and better sustain than hunters.
While this is the PvP forum and I mostly PVE. But lets look at other classes…
warlock affliction, tons of self healing, shields, more healing, and actually heals like a healer…with shields…
fury warrior…sustain for days, though not quite up to par with warlock, their talent trees have so much self healing potential. Then you look at hunter and see they get a junky self heal in comparison and a lame defense turtle ability
Shadow priest…kinda more balanced as far as self healing goes, but far more self healing than they had in SL, and does a lot of damage
Enhance shaman, probably the most “balanced” self sustain class, but still vastly more than hunter
Rogue…sub is almost certainly gonna get the nerf bat, but for now and if it doesnt, it has vastly more self defenses, self sustain and heals than hunter
Hunter gets one piece of junk self heal (or two I guess if you take a spirit pet, but leech pets survive far better) and a junky defense ability. I think one of the pet types offers a defense too, but its so lacking compared to almost everyone else
Trap is the “ace in the sleeve” for hunters, but healers are VERY good avoiding them higher MMR and even when you do…
disarm, stormbolt, deathcoil, teleport/jump behind a pillar, evasion every 20 seg…
If you win a match as hunter is literally because you pressed 10 times more buttons.
Lack of rep doesn’t mean something is weak. I only saw a very small handful of teams playing outlaw/aff/rdruid and it felt like one of the most oppressive things I’ve queued into.
I saw a decent chunk of Hunters floating between high duelist and high glad. There’s just only so many ferals and they’ve had the option of playing kitty in recent seasons.
Again, hunter has been more than fine for any goal, even if it has had limited perceived comp options.
They can mean something. It’s just they’re often interpreted poorly. Outlaw for instance has been low rep despite being arguably the best melee.
they were the first dps most played spec above warriors in shadowlands, in AWC professionals were playing 2 outlaw + healer in that moment
complexity/fun is not above balance, this is a simple rule of online games, i invite you to play league of legends (the most balanced online game) for a year
