First off, I’m going to mention something: Hunters are strong AF at level 25 in classic vanilla. I recognize that it’s very difficult to balance them at this level without neutering them in the future because of how they scale. I also recognize that warriors charge at me and deal 500 damage in a global with CBR+Raging Blow, and that other classes have very high damage potential (rogues dealing 1000 damage in 3 globals). I think hunters get a lot of negative attention for their “OP” factor because they’re literally afking and sending their pets at people and laughing while a player struggles to 1v1 their pet. This isn’t fun for anyone, unless the hunter is pathetic and in denial of their own lack of skill. Hunter’s are not posting 200 - 300 DPS like rogues and warriors. However, posting high damage numbers for Hunter requires no brain, and no interesting gameplay. Set it and forget it.
I also want to issue a disclaimer that I think this season is incredible–and that the Classic team is doing a GREAT JOB. However, even the best jobs aren’t without room for improvement, and this is an attempt to convince the Classic team that Hunter is lacking in variety, and needs more work.
The problem with hunter right now is not with pet damage scaling. It’s the lack of choice.
Hunters do not have a choice between the different spec/class fantasies that players choose hunter for. It seems like you’ve chosen to really narrow your focus on a melee-weaving hunter, which is a playstyle that attracts a very, very small portion of the playerbase. Most people choose hunter because they’re looking for the Archer/Ranger class in WoW, and they fall in love with the pet as they level, then get annoyed with it at cap because it runs in and dies and you spend most of your time resurrecting your pet. Leveling up a hunter feels amazing, then you hit cap and it turns into the biggest dissapointment in WoW, with the exception of PvP.
There are 3 major class fantasies for Hunter:
BM: Adventuring Side-By-Side with your Pet (Rexxar)
MM: Archer (Legolas)
Survival: Melee Hybrid with a pet(Drizzt Do’Urden)
The question you should be asking yourselves in the design process is very simple:
“How do we equalize the output and viability of each one of these specs, so that players have a hard time deciding which is best, but still feeling excited and powerful when they choose one over the other?” There should never be a massive margin in the power levels of each spec, they should all be viable and equally as strong within a small margin of one another. You can accomplish this through DPS sims and testing.
The runes need to be re-designed. They compete with one another in an unbalanced fashion, with most rune slots feeling like you have only one choice. The rest of the runes feel weak, useless, and don’t appear to play into the class fantasy that they’re intended to reinforce. If I want to play without a pet, I’m better off running Master Marksman or Lion instead of Lone Wolf. The damage increase is higher (even when you’re without a pet) with those runes. If I want to play melee? I should spec into BM and let my pet do most of my damage. If I want to run a high crit ranger burst spec? I need to run Master Marksman over Lone Wolf, and the only way to get a high enough crit chance to make Cobra Strikes worthwhile…is to run Master Marksman, which competes for the chest rune slot.
Below is an analysis of each rune and it’s viability, how it’s currently used, and if there’s even a reason to run it at all.
CHEST RUNES
Hunters are currently pidgeonholed into a single rune choice. Aspect of the Lion
Aspect of the Lion:
90% of your time will be spent running Aspect of the Lion. It’s borderline required and expected by every group you join.
Cobra Strikes
Very neat ability that would be great if Hunters had any respectable level of crit chance. Most of our crit chance is driven by Master Marksman which competes for the slot. Because of this, Cobra Strikes is currently unplayable and drives very little overall DPS compared to Lion or Master Marksman.
Master Marksman
The only chest rune that competes with Lion at all. You only run this in BG’s and raids if you have another hunter who has accepted the unfortunate position of being the Aspect of the Lion Hunter. No crits for him! I see this rune falling off late game when Lion’s agility bonus actually outweighs the 5% crit from Master Marksman, and players have access to Viper Sting to keep their mana rolling on long fights.
Lone Wolf:
Absolute grind of a rune to acquire, to which you get rewarded with a flat 15% damage boost to your character, that has an opportunity cost of losing Aspect of the Lion, a now mandatory “Aura” on top of your other aspects. Currently, the 15% damage boost pales in comparison to BM Pet damage, which generally makes up 50% of a hunter’s damage output. I can see this getting better in future phases with feign+trap and pet scaling falling off–but the way that pets are scaling right now makes it appear like they will be very strong at 60 a la TBC’s introduction of Pet Scaling.
As you can see, there is one single choice for the vast majority of gameplay, and then there is the option to run Master Marksman if you’re with another hunter. Hardly a choice. Even if you wanted to run without a pet, both Master Marksman and Aspect of the Lion result in a higher damage output without a pet than Lone Wolf right now. The rune is literally useless. If you’re not going to re-design Lone Wolf, you should buff Lone Wolf in this earlier phase and then nerf it later if it’s too unbalanced at 60. This would allow player choice in their spec throughout each phase. It’s not fun to unlock runes that only come online at 60 in the 25 bracket. Warriors got a 20% damage bonus for hanging out at 80 rage–we get a 15% flat bonus for sacrificing half of our damage? Doesn’t make sense. There is no benefit to running this rune. I think you need to come up with some clever ways to make the rune feel good when you don’t run a pet, rather than just simply adding a flat damage bonus.
A suggestion for Lone Wolf would be:
Only active when your pets are stabled (no summoning your pet to help you at all).
Increases the cooldown of Disengage by 25 seconds.
-25% HP
-10% Armor
+20% Bonus Damage
+10% stacking movespeed (stacks with cheetah or other movespeed bonuses)
+25% damage to your next Aimed Shot or Raptor Strike after using Disengage.
This would beef up Lone Wolf’s damage (which is too low right now), add a dynamic effect on a 30 second cooldown to disengage that makes sense for a Lone Wolf, increasing their burst potential in PvP without a pet, and adding a dynamic option for playing Melee, Melee/Ranged Hybrid, or a solo Archer. BM should be inline with the damage output of the spec, and this spec would specialize in bursty moments and needing to skillfully stay at range. Skirting in and out of combat and dealing lots of burst is the Lone Wolf fantasy. By relegating the burst damage to Aimed Shot or Raptor Strike, it forces the player’s high damage burst output to be on either. The reduction in health and armor would make the class into a Glass Cannon without a pet, but require lots of setup to enable that high bursty damage output. In general, Lone Wolf should have a high skill ceiling, but should be appropriately rewarding for skilled.
LEG SLOTS
Choosing a leg slot rune is a decision about “which one of these is the least terrible.”
Serpent Spread - Terrible. It’s currently bugged and Chimera Shot’s bonus 40% damage doesn’t even proc off of it. Even if you refresh the full sting duration, future stings that came from Serpent Spread don’t proc the 40% damage bonus to Chimera Shot, which makes this key combo worthless. Fix the bug and this will be a good choice for PvP burst combos.
Kill Command - It’s worthless. A 1 minute cooldown for a net increase of ~200 damage. OK in pvp, since we have no other options to run. Still feels like a terrible ability that now ONLY works with claw and bite. Neutered.
Sniper Training - Again, worthless. In the rare event that you do stand still for 6 seconds and proc it, this only applies to Shot ABILITIES, and increases your chance to crit with them from ~10% to 20%. Most of the time this means a 20% chance to crit with Multishot and arcane shot. Even if you run chimera or explosive, you’re not going to see a crit for standing there in one spot while enemies run in your deadzone or out of range. If it’s a raid? You’re probably moving due to a mechanic. Using Sniper Training just feels bad. You never get to recognize the benefit of it.
Flanking Strike - This finally feels great. Good job adjusting this one. Only issue with it is that the bonus damage to Raptor Strike is completely RNG, and I think that should probably be changed.
Suggestions for the leg runes:
- Fix Serpent Spread to properly interact with Chimera Shot
- Drop Kill Command’s cooldown to 30s
- Change Sniper Training to operate differently. Make it reward a high APM gameplay loop and not standing still for 6 seconds. Forcing players to stand in one spot for an extended period of time is never a good design choice. We like moving. Especially on hunter. Give players a +10% increase in damage when they move 15 yards instead.
- Flanking Strike - Take the RNG out of the ability and give it a 20s cooldown. Have it reduce Raptor Strike’s cooldown by 4.5 seconds for 10 seconds after casting, so that dual wield players can spam Raptor Strike, and not purely 2h Melee Hunters. Weaving should still outperform the playstyle, but it would bring Pure Melee hunters up a bit.
GLOVE RUNES:
Currently, if you don’t run BM, you’re essentially trying to break the meta or you just hate the BM playstyle.
BM is just simply so overpowered right now that every other rune pales in comparison. If Lone Wolf was actually good, it might force a decision between BM and a different playstyle. In another reality, Lone Wolf and BM would have shared the same rune slot, which would make much more sense. By having them on separate rune slots, you’ve eliminated another decision point for players. You simply cannot run Lone Wolf and BM at the same time without questioning your own sanity.
Beast Mastery: Required if you take yourself seriously.
Chimera Shot: A lot of fun, needs a small damage boost to 100% weapon damage. Also needs to operate with Serpent Spread correctly.
Explosive Shot: Cool AoE ability for swapping in dungeons, no application in PvP.
Carve Cool ability, but just pales in comparison to BM if you’re going to run Flanking Strike or put out any respectable DPS numbers as a melee hunter. Carve also feels like a “less good” explosive shot now for AoE purposes. I could see this ability scaling well later on, especially for applications like Core Hounds in MC, but having only niche applications–and in general BM rune will outshine it because the bonus pet damage will outscale it.
I’d love the options to run:
Lone Wolf + Serpent Spread + Chimera Shot
Lion + Kill Command + BM
Master Marksman + Sniper Training + Chimera Shot or Explosive Shot
And have all three of these options be equivalent in power. However, option 2 is wildly disproportionate in power compared to the other options, and I’m very worried that with the newly added Pet Scaling, that the competing options will never catch up. If there were no pet scaling I’d be holding out for future phases, but because it’s in, I see hunters just becoming pet managers, which isn’t a fun playstyle at all. If it continues, I’m likely going to reroll to Warrior.