Dear Classic dev team,
I play a medium pop (H) server in a small raiding guild, and I think you have done a terrific job with the hunter Classic experience. My PvE shot rotation was quick to learn, but offers a very high skill cap with melee-weaving/FD trinket swaps. In PvP, my class is a terror at range and near useless once engaged in melee or held in the dead-zone. There have been some changes since Vanilla (liked the shared DR of Freezing Trap and Scatter Shot) but in both areas, hunter damage/utility feels balanced with the relative merits of melee and casters.
In Phase 5, I am concerned about PvE DPS balance. I will see few (if any) major gear upgrades (IE, no improvements on Ashejreâthul or Dragonstalkerâs T2 set bonus in AQ across standard specs), while casters and melee can expect major weapon and itemization improvements. With more spell hit, Ignite stacking, and fury warrior/rogue scaling, I expect to fall well behind many comparatively skilled damage dealers. One excellent way to balance this decline would be updating Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer (RCD) and Fengusâ Ferocity (FF) to effect Ranged Attack Power (RAP) in addition to Melee Attack Power.
Three arguments for this update:
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Balances targeted game elements: Changing RCD and FF to affect RAP would offer an additional 400 attack power (200 from RCD; 200 from FF) to hunters who have both world buffs active. This represents a 15-25% flat increase in RAP that is immediately lost on death. These buffs are used most frequently for progressing through PvE raids (They are lost quickly in most PvP settings), and RAP directly impacts no other classes. If you are concerned with buff weighting, consider staggering one change in Phase 5 (IE. Just RCD effects RAP) and activating both in Phase 6.
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Supports existing mechanics: Currently, players who invest time gathering world buffs gain a major DPS advantage over all players/classes who ignore them. Further, neither RCD nor FF specifies âmelee APâ like Warchiefâs Blessing specifies â15% haste to melee attacks,â they just inexplicably do not affect RAP. The minor modification in Phase 5 to add RAP to RCD and FF (without even changing the tooltip) will help world-buffed hunters remain competitive with melee and caster scaling, assuming they stay alive.
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Rewards intelligent play: Classic WoW has always favored worldbuilding, strategic use of consumables, and effective mastery of class roles. By giving hunters a situational buff to RAP, the updates to RCD and FF would incentivize hunters to: engage globally around Dire Maul/Onyxia through later phases, survive âfull-clearsâ of raid content without dying, and complete social objectives quickly and efficiently.
Awesome work on the classic experience so far and thank you for considering this design update. Looking forward to upcoming content releases!
10 Likes
I thought this was going to be something ridiculous. I donât actually mind this. #signed.
3 Likes
Honestly iâd be more in favor of them nerfing the crutch/hassle that is world buffs but thatâs probably too big of a change for most to handle (even if i doubt it would affect most people complaining about it).
But yeah beyond that i agree with the OP, even though i donât think it will fix the Hunter issues will face in more serious guilds.
Mine is fairly casual and still asked and helped a few to reroll to something else in preparation for P5.
3 Likes
Shoulda rolled warlock, my dude.
1 Like
Why not remove world buffs instead. With the increased hassle it is now with the layering on high pop servers, I find this a better option.
7 Likes
how dare you suggest a way in which classic could be made more fun
3 Likes
All good points and Iâve thought this for a while. Not going to happen though. PS Melee weaving is a meme.
3 Likes
The world buffs say âattack powerâ âattack powerâ on gear effects all Melee and Ranged.
Iâm pretty sure itâs also just a programming fault on blizzards behalf (they have a tendency to screw things up as we all know)
3 Likes
We all knew that Hunters scaled poorly in late PVE for Vanilla⊠We knew that. We knew the reasons it did too. It wasnât addressed until TBC.
They arenât going to make changes to help with this. I know that time is approaching/arriving and its annoying to see your class start to fall behind, but this was literally destined to happen. Classic is not and never has been about addressing the flaws in Vanilla.
1 Like
Youâre asking for a balance change; this is a big no no. Take your class as you get it, or reroll. I personally went up to Naxx as a hunter, so I can tell you all about how neglected the class is during the AQ 40 period; but it is what it is. You should enjoy the fact that youâre playing the best BG class and easiest raiding class. Furthermore, if you did any kind of research, you would know what you were in for.
#nochanges
Bank the class until burning crusade if you donât like it here.
2 Likes
#nochanges, and I say this as a hunter main
1 Like
Actually, Iâm suggesting an update to ambiguous environmental mechanics in line with current fixes being implemented by the dev team.
The benefits to hunter damage and raid balance across all classes are simply reasons to prioritize the update in Phases 5 & 6.
1 Like
I think all 9 classes â actually all 27 sub-classes â have a ton of things that could be improved in Classic. I canât see Blizzard improving only hunters.
Everyone knows (even Blizzard) that Classic has a ton of imperfections, and a ton of things that could be improved. But for some reason, tons of players want to play Vanila (not some âimprovedâ version), so Blizzard allows it.
I donât even think Blizzard HAS a âdev teamâ for Classic WoW.
I would also love to see hunters not fall off, like we know they will.
However, I would prefer if world buffs were stripped from all players when they enter 40-man raid instances. This would improve balance even more, and make raiding challenging enough to keep up with 2020 raid knowledge.
1 Like
No hunter buffs. Hunters were a meme in Vanilla used mostly to make fun of the people named xXxLegolazzXxX360.
It is important to maintain that part of their heritage.
lol, playing a hunter in classic.
Dude, seriously. Everyone knew what vanilla hunters were like. They are mostly worthless in pve. People like you should have been asking for classic+ from the start. Since you werenât you arenât going to get these kind of changes now because the âno changesâ people won. Yes there are changes but in principal there wonât be changes like youâre asking for because those are the kind of no changes theyâre talking about from the start.
It wasnât a bug, it applies to only melee attack power. It wasnât changed until TBC patch because of AP flask
Sheesh. Tough crowd. It would be one thing if the guy was asking for a major change in class mechanics, but this would literally take about 30 minutes total time for coding + testing short of the code just being garbage. Also even with these buffs I donât think it makes up the difference hunters are missing from other dps classes.
All that said, unless you are in a hardcore guild that is cutting off hunters, I am not sure it matters. We have everything under the sun in our 2 bwl farms.
