Are we not as bad as we think we are?

Classes Hunter
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Disclaimer: this is not a April Fool’s Joke, but now after saying that you’ll probably think it is. That’s on you.

I saw a post on Reddit about the 9.1 PTR going up soon, so I commented that Hunters are in a bad spot at the moment, which some outlier scenarios where we do well, but overall it’s not great. I was told by almost everyone that I was wrong. Everyone basically said “Not sure what game you’re playing, but Hunters are in great spot, they are viable for all content.” Some even went as far as to stay BM is great in high M+ keys and Mythic raids, and I just felt like I was taking crazy pills.

And I had to think really hard. Maybe I’m just not as bad as I think I am? Maybe Kill Command does great damage. Maybe our Mastery isn’t terrible. Maybe our pet’s AI isn’t whack. Maybe Animal Companion is a well designed talent. Maybe there are no dead talents. Maybe I’m just stupid, and I’m blinding myself to what the game actually is.

Then I went to Warcraft Logs and reminded myself that no, all Hunter specs are in the bottom half of the meters, and the difference between the top 5 and the bottom 5 are gigantic. Sure those are numbers, and numbers don’t equate to the average player, but I still feel that maybe our class isn’t design well and hasn’t received many major changes for a while now.

I mean yeah, MM is still pretty good in M+, and SV can have its moments there as well, but if you’re pushing keys, groups are more likely to take other classes over Hunters.

What does everyone think, are we in a decent spot?

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Well, we do have a much bigger Stable for our Hunter Pets.

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I honestly don’t believe reddit facilitates a good environment for discussion. In addition, some players believe because MM was desirable for high key means we must be fine.

I honestly don’t think most players truly know or always understand why a class may be brought beyond just its damage numbers. Or even necessarily how said spec obtains those numbers.

So, no. I don’t think you’re taking crazy pills. The onus would be on you in that situation to provide sufficient evidence, but if they don’t want to hear it there’s not much you can really do.

Also, felt like this was an important bit. Everyone wants to believe they are good. Many people are able to take a step back and find what they can improve on or even potentially recognize they aren’t good at the moment. Which is a great way to becoming good.

But many more people are unable to recognize that in themselves. If you believe you’re good but you’re really only playing mediocre, and you are paired with someone who is good but may not be on a great class, it may lead you to believe that class is fine because personal experience showed they did well.

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I really appreciate you saying that. I did try to explain what makes a Hunter bad mechanically, but none of them wanted to hear it. I tried explaining that one small change to MM and it fell down 15 spots on the meters shows not only that the Covenant ability was potentially overtuned, but also that one small change opens up a myriad of others problems for the spec. In addition, I tried to explain the scaling issues associated with BM, how Kill Command is weak, and how our Mastery is terrible. Despite all that, they still felt like I was wrong and stupid for saying that. I was shocked.

And yeah, I can see your point regarding Reddit not facilitating a good environment for discussion. I was hesitant to even bring up the website I was on, but I decided to include it for clarity. You can find some communities that are great for discussion, but larger communities, such as the WoW subreddit, are guilty of confirmation bias and narrow minded thinking. If X portrayed as X, it can only be X.

Completely agree. Just because you joined a group where someone played fantastic, doesn’t mean the average player can achieve that. And just because you joined a group where someone from another spec, that you haven’t played before, did well doesn’t represent that spec as a whole. And that’s where there is an issue, I feel, with balancing. Either you balance around the average player or you balance around the best player. If you balance around the average player, which could artificially inflate the spec’s numbers, an extremely good player will make the class look overpowered. Conversely, if you balance around the good player, you make the class look overall weak to the average player.

I’m an above average player, I feel. I parse, on average, in the low 70s to low 80s, depending in the fight. I know I have tons of room for improvement, and with dedication I can get to a better spot. However, even at this level I feel that other classes can parse worse and do better than me overall. And that’s why I feel that Hunters are in a rough spot. If someone can come in and parse in the high 50s to low 60s, and still out DPS, there are some fundamental problems at play.

I hope I can get my point across. Although, I do feel as if I am leaving something important out.

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I think that’s a fair point. One of my favorites is the dndnext subreddit, but even that one you can kind of see some things that they won’t budge on despite evidence to the contrary to a popular belief.

I like reddit, but I don’t post too often there for that reason. I also feel like toxicity runs rampant there unfortunately. It’s often not just people who disagree but are actively being antagonizing towards others. And I’m not naive to think it doesn’t happen here too, but at least to me, it seems really bad there on bigger subreddits.

I think you’ve done a good job, I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it. I will say that with posts that I know may be controversial or may be interpreted in a way I did not intend, or more generally wanting to make sure my thoughts are clear and concise, I will take my time in writing our whatever I want to post. I’m autistic IRL (though well adjusted / high functioning) and communication has always been a struggle for me. So I genuinely love posting and getting my thoughts out in writing when possible, since I use that as a strategy to help gather my thoughts and make sure I’m clear to my reader or without getting caught up emotionally or distracted in some manner like how I might when speaking.

Anyway, hope this helps! Seriously though don’t feel too bad. I think self examination and taking a step back is a good thing!

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I don’t really know you, but I’ve found your posts to be well thought out and easy to understand…which is really helpful for me.

I would be one of those players that struggles and absolutely knows it! Lol.

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Thank you. Although the point I was trying to make was I felt that maybe I left an important part out of my argument. I believe that having controversy is important to good discussion. If we agree on everything, what’s the point in even having a discussion? Thank you for your kind words.

Not sure if you’re talking to me, or Lazyguide as your post could be for either. I generally find his points well thought out as well and extremely easy to read as well. But thank you nonetheless.

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I freely admit I have no idea what goes on in high level keys. I just find it frustrating that people seem to think they need to get meta class/specs to time their +10. It’s amusing, but also frustrating.

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I started this expansion on my hunter. MM is in a great spot in mythic plus and pvp. Surivial is also very fun in pvp and mythic plus. Open world content tho is a drag and I think that’s where I felt weaker.

The 4 sec res makes it super annoying and it doesn’t feel as fun soloing content as it used to. Torghast hits hard and so does the maw. I found my shaman to be tanking and better for open world content then my hunter and that’s saying a lot m.

Hunters aren’t in a bad spot, but if all u do is open world content and raids u might feel this way.

ALWAYS REMEMBER!!! How well any class/specs is doing needs to be weighed against ALL content!!! Not just what u do. Otherwise it isn’t a fair assessment.

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Not sure if this was intended for me or OP, but I appreciate the sentiment either way!

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. When I was raiding more frequently back during Legion I had a couple of guildies I helped out only because they asked for advice. Nothing wrong with having difficulties ^^!

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Yeah, I meant you Lazyguide, since you said communication was something you worked on. :wink:

You’ve succeeded

Edited because that seemed cold to you Pincushion. I’m not as familiar with your posts is all. I didn’t mean to be rude.

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It didn’t feel like you were coming off rude at all. I had the feeling you weren’t talking about me, but your reply wasn’t to him specifically so I wasn’t so sure.

Agreed. However, I only really do low-ish M+ keys, Raiding, Torghast when I need to, and Open World content. I don’t PvP like ever. And if I do it’s usually for a laugh late in the expansion.

BM isn’t really excelling in the areas of the game I play in, and that doesn’t feel good. There are some things that can be done to remedy this, and I feel it to be on Blizzard to balance it accordingly. However, I feel that maybe a lot of people just don’t take BM seriously. My guild always say “The greatest thing about being BM is how easy it is to switch to MM.” They say it jokingly, but there is some truth to that. I just wish people took the spec more serious. Maybe then the spec will get the balance it deserves.

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I think it’s that people are stuck with the first version of the MM hunter spec when shadowlands first came out. We were performing way above average and got called out for nerfs which of course happened because if it was any other class, it wouldn’t have happened (fire mages and balanced druids come to mind). After the nerfs and the fact that we scale poorly which blizzard should have figured out beforehand we fell and then they did the bugfix which nerfed as further.

Now here we are.

What’s hilarious was that blizzard actually did not think that the bugfix would nerf us that hard. Have they ever heard of math?

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I dont know what to tell you guys, Im BM and I guess Im really freakin good at BM because Im often top overall damage in plus 15’s and in the top 5 spots of mythic raid dps, even top dps spot occasionally. Ive decided, sims, are fake news, either theres something broken there or NOBODY plays well enough to actually represent the sims. Or maybe just very few people play that well. Im way more than viable, Im highly competitive. I just dont understand these endless discussions that are completely foreign to me, what Im doing is nothing special, BM flows really well and we have the ability of constant movement making mechanics much easier and allowing me to keep up my rotation optimally.

Just getting frustrated with everyone looking at sims, I truly believe they are completely unrealistic.

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You do parse very well and play great. Looking at your guilds logs a lot of people in your guild are blue parses so not saying they are bad but if they parsed on your level you would be lower on the dps rankings. Even look at a few of the fights like huntsman where a boomkin parses much lower than your 97 and still beats you by 500 dps or so.
Again you are a great player and not trying to crap on your guild mates but they are not the greatest players.

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Haven’t played in some time. Last time I was on it was specifically NF hunters doing well. The covenants for hunter were very unequal in terms of usefulness in content.

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Your points are correct, mostly I think its a case of I can play optimally on progression content alot easier than they can, once they get comfortable with the new tier level on that boss they start beating me more and more. I just get there alot quicker but Im already close to maxing out (at our current gear levels) so they eventually pass me. But I look at alot of peoples guilds parses and Im still competing with their numbers. My point being, all the discussion is ridiculous because the people talking the most poop about BM cant even play well, they shouldnt have an opinion lol. Theres an mm guy in another thread going off about BM but I beat his damage on almost every fight, like what are people thinking? The sims are not realistic.

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Ah I see your point. I do agree I tend to be able to get the fight down faster since can be more mobile than others.
I also do want to say a well played BM is fine to bring to mythic raid since we can do mechanics well.
Ya that guy is a nutter.

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Nobody is looking at sims, people look at logs and this is where the hunter is currently bottom of the barrel.

You look at your own raid. A tiny fraction of the population and see yourself being in the upper brackets because you perform better than the rest of your raid. Then you go and look at one or two more raids with other classes performing subpar and see your bias confirmed…
Why dont you take all the data we have into account? Warcraftlogs lets you do that. Taking everything into account is a LOT more significant than just your own raid or a few more.

When you parse 98 on a fight and compare yourself to players who parse blue (and dont see the problem), ofc you might think that hunter is doing fine. Compare yourself to other classes who are playing just as well and you will see that hunters are currently not fine. Look at the whole picture, not just your own surrounding.

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I’m not saying hunter is a free easy class to play but we’re not hindered as much by mechanics and don’t get punished as much for messing up our rotation. I’ve noticed that people that usually complain about hunters play much harder classes and to be frank they just play bad. If someone on a boomie or lock parsed a 45 and did the same dps as me parsing a 90 there’s a problem.

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