Dev's comment on Hunter Fantasy

Classes Hunter
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I don’t think this is the best place for this post and I’m probably gonna get flamed/yell at by Blizzard but I gotta say it.

In regards to Nixom’s blue post in the DF Alpha thread HERE

“While I don’t want to comment for every single tree directly, comparing a class that has been around for 17+ years to a brand new class is very difficult. Evokers don’t have years of precedent and mechanics to build off of. It is a very different experience to design a talent tree for a totally new class with basically zero core ideas that players are accustomed to, compared to designing talents for a class that has years of expectations and styles of play around it.”

Am I crazy/misreading the posts or does Nixom’s comment of Hulkbow’s post have absolutely nothing to do with “17 years of precedent” and anything else Hulkbow is saying. You could have easily replaced “Evoker” with “Outlaw Rogue” and Hulkbow’s comparison would still make sense. What does 17 years of precedent have to do with Huntbow’s example of sacrificial talents.

Also, Blizzard literally upended and redesigned an entire hunter spec (did anyone ask for it?). It was mostly melee for one expansion (Vanilla), given mostly (4/6) talents that worked exclusively with ranged attacks in BC, and then all but abandoned in Wrath with BA and ES. This doesn’t exactly exude “a class that has [17] years of expectations and styles of play around it”

My big issue with this…
155 words written [by Nixom] in address to 8 words on a 723 word post [my Hulkbow] and none of those 155 words even address what Hulkbow was really speaking about. It feels like when you’re at your job and you bring up a LEGITIMATE concern about something to your manager, your manager listens, and when you’re finished the manager says “Your shirt is untucked” and then leaves. This kind of comment leads to one of two thought processes:

  1. The entire post was read → there was a conscious effort to NOT comment on the actual point of the post → If existing, a conscious effort was made to not redirect OP to another post that addresses the concerns ->Post and done
  2. The post was read up until the aforementioned 8 words → the reading ceased → the 155 words were written about the 8 words → Post and done

Either way it was a lackluster response to say the least and while I always assume there was no actual ill-intent, that doesn’t mean it was palatable.

It might be that I see the class more critically since I have 15 years of experience with it but it really looks bad compared to other classes (who also have 17 years of design). Rogues have these huge, sprawling talent trees. Druids get to basically choose an off-spec to use with their tree (Very cool). Hunters get massive point sinks on arguably lame talents, boring/repeated talents that don’t belong to the spec they’re in (BM Wailing Arrow??), and (in BMs case) core functionality from a core ability (that has been there since the ability came out and that significantly impact out classes pace) ripped out and spread throughout the tree (See Barbed Wrath, Loaded Quiver, and Wild Call). Reclaiming all of these lost passives that were there from the start takes 22/30 points and forces you to the right side of the tree. CORE SPEC FUNTIONALITY is being taken away from us and lackadaisically being rationed back to us in lieu of interesting design and player choices. THIS IS A PROBLEM AND FEELS BAD and comments like this cause me to question the direction the class is going and how it is being handled.

Dragonflight was looking to be a great expansion but all of these problems with the class/fantasy that I’ve fallen in love with for the past 15 years has never made me more displeased with the Hunter or with WoW than they have now in this alpha.

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personally i’m a little shocked that somebody that’s been playing for 15 years is flabbergasted by blueposts not having anything of substance in them.

of course they’re going to avoid hardball questions and only respond to soft/easy ones

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The ironic part about that post is that Hunter has been in the game for 17 years but Evoker has more talents to choose from. Why?

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Yea rubbed me the wrong way when they only used the last two expansions for ideas. And I totally think survival is in a identity crisis, its just kept being watered-down after it was introduced and then they threw in kill command a bm ability

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I was hopeful when I saw Nimox replied quite heavily on the hunter thread but then realized it was barely a single line about SV (which has received by far the most critique of the hunter specs, if not of all released specs total) and that line was like “we are looking at lowering the costs of some talents and moving serpent sting” which is such a letdown.

I live on the hope that they might be quite silent about the SV hunter because it’s still being heavily iterated upon and still in pre-alpha development while the others are further along, towards the tuning aspect of the development. Because how it looks that would be the logical conclusion but considering how badly they’ve treated SV the last couple expansions I’m more leaning towards them just not considering it being worth the effort or straight up them having no idea what to do about it.

SV is so controversial. It’s been reworked/remade heavily 2 times the last 3 expansions and it’s still the least played spec and surrounded by heavy criticism and controversy around melee/ranged etc. I am afraid they figure that whatever they do it’s going to be a disaster so they just wont give it the resources/attention it needs. Priorities in their eye, screwing over the old SV players, the current and anyone who potentially would like to play it.

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Went back and read his reply and I don’t really get it. I guess he means that a class that is completely new leaves more room for wild ideas and making what they want… While Hunter is weighed down by all these 17 years of development and history?

a) this is not true to SV spec though, that is not even 6 years of history. With 1 large rework 4 years ago… That is really not that much to go on no? Should be plenty of possibilities here! Actually one of the big flaws with the SV tree is, IMO, that it seems like they have Nothing substantial to put in there… so plenty of room to invent new shiny stuff and “reinvent” the spec with a good rotation/identity

b) This just seems like he argues against their own actions. Because considering the 17 years of history for hunter and at least BM/MM there should be Plenty of stuff to draw from and bring back and/or new stuff to put in. For a lot of the things I really can’t see why they picked X before Y or Z. For example why in gods name is Nesingwary’s, like the key element to the most disliked playstyle/build I’ve ever seen, brought back? Or Death chakram instead of flayed shot for example? What is so broken with resonating arrow that it’s not brought back, super fun ability even if you tune it so it’s not as strong. By their own reasoning there should be plenty of stuff there to give us a good class…

c) Even if we ignore the spec trees and focus on the class tree there is so much controversy. They bring back steel trap as a cap stone row 10 talent? But ignore so many other good and fun traps. They give us Explosive shot but totally ignores the other talents we’d need to make the build that made explosive shot actually fun/a good build…

Like it feels that they make the wrong choices about what to bring back and how to build it (I mean… the class tree is literally filled with these ranged shots and a trap… while the class is 2 ranged and 1 melee build! They can’t have thought that would work out well for SV?) and just miss the mark so widely.

Their actions: We don’t have anything interesting to bring back, we don’t really know what to put in. Let’s just throw in some iconic hunter stuff in the class and spec tree and hope it works out… Although the class has been out for 17 years.

Their words: The class is so old and have so much rich history and things to bring back/take inspiration from so it’s not fair to compare it to our new, fantastic and OP as nothing class that we’ve had complete freedom to invent new stuff for as it’s not got as much history/things to bring back.

It just saddens me to see when you talk to people about Rogue, Evoker, Druid and DK. Most people seem so happy and having fun. While we are here with the most wonky class tree and this “elephant in the room” division splitting the whole class up now. Before SV “just” ruined SV and it could be ignored. Now it’s like they have to try to get the class tree to work for both ranged and melee, based on all the hunter history (which is almost exclusively ranged) and it’s just going to hamper the ranged classes and make the melee feel pointless. It currently does not feel like melee at all (it’s a very poor mans tinker or something, minus contraptions/traps). If they don’t think well and hard on this and execute it very well I think it’s going to leave hunter in a very poor state. Perhaps as poor as the SV revamp left SV.

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True lol

I presume he is saying that having no prior history, there are no pre-existing constraints to the class fantasy that have been around for years to basically dictate what the class can/cannot be. I.E. the mage class is Frost, Fire, and Arcane range caster. The Rogue is a Stealthy assassin with poisons and shadows. Mages and Rogues have existing class fantasies that predate Warcraft and coloring too far outside the lines leads to the class not feeling like it belongs (a Survival Hunter situation IMO but that’s a different convo). What Nixom said makes sense but it has nothing to do with what the OP he responded to said.

Exactly, like I understand a lot of class design/abilities in past expansions were arguably inferior but take inspirations. You could make an entire MM variant that is an Arcane Archer fantasy with Black Arrow and other old RSV design where it basically played like a Dot class. A Windrunner Variant with Legion Artifact abilities, Wailing Arrow, etc.

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Can you really call hunter 17 years old when each spec was completely redesigned in legion (and MM in BfA)? If the tree is limited due to the need to keep traditional hunter spells and mechanics, why are we still missing so many we used to have?

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Good questions. I mean I dont think anyone would try to claim that it’s the exact same as 17 years ago. But the class and BM/MM is 17 years old. Survival was there as well but I think that one was so changed it’s hard to argue it’s 17 years old… If you pretty much remove everything and then put something new in then no, SV is not 17 years old per say. But the other specs have really just evolved, not been removed or been remade fundamentally to it’s very core.

And yes, I wonder this myself. If they have 17 years of class fantasy and history to draw on you’d think they would have a better class tree. And SV being so new shouldn’t be a problem either… since it doesn’t really have that much going for it and it’s almost universally disliked you’d think they’d take the opportunity to add refine the identity/theme of it and then add some new stuff to complete the spec. Time will tell I guess, just a few more months…

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I thought i was the only one who thought it was lazy af to take everything we had and piecemeal it into talents on the tree.

Most of the important things core to the spec like BW granting 2 charges and other things should be baseline. Then talents shouldve been made to augment it further like have barded shot roll its dmg so when you get procs free that it makes it worth having instead of just refreshing duration.

In what world does Beast Cleave make sense as a 3 point talent especially since it doesnt offer any additional time to its duration. Should be standard when you take MS. Then talents to augemnt duration and dmg…maybe 10% chance adds serpent sting to every enemy hit. Thick hide scare beast… exhilaratiion healing your pet…literally useless for everyone except the solo world hunter. So many bad unimaginative talents that many of the posters here couldve came up with better in 5 min. Where the hell are our survival/ dmg reduction talents that we have needed so badly instead of these bullsheet filler talents.
Its gonna come down to tuning on whats viable but i feel disappointed by the tree.

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I can see that having 17 years of class history and being the most played class can make tuning the hunter class rather difficult. It probably has the widest subset of player-base to satisfy comparing to other classes.

  1. Fits the class fantasy.
  2. Does competitive damage for endgame content.
  3. Strong enough for world solo content, without being excessively strong in others.
  4. Has interest/interactive playstyles to attract new players and keep existing gamers happy. At the same time remain easy enough to keep the retirees subscribed.

The current talents and talent trees setup can sure use some work, but I would give the designers some slack.

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The stuff that makes the class functional in open world content doesn’t have to be on the talent tree, since that’s not an area they balance around.

It’s also worth noting it had to be gutted out of the class to be added to the class tree - which means that hunter suitability for solo content is still lacking, notably because some bosses still are either dangerous to pets no matter how much you heal them, or don’t aggro onto pets well, which means your woeful baseline defensives will still leave you a corpse.

I can see that having 17 years of class history and being the most played class can make tuning the hunter class rather difficult. It probably has the widest subset of player-base to satisfy comparing to other classes.

What’s actually happened is that they’ve been particularly lazy with massive bugs just remaining baseline and only the self applied fixes that hunters come up with every actually being addressed.

Pet Ai being wonky? Take advantage of fast dismiss - leads to some non-ideal pvp behavior - slow down dismiss time. But the Pet AI is still not fixed. Not to mention the hilarious situation of those same casuals they’re supposedly catering to not necessarily realizing that their “tank” pets are absolute garbage at tanking things.

Just because a class is the most played doesn’t excuse it having no raid utility AND relying on heavily bugged systems that aren’t fixed AND being a liability in high end content because of lack of survivability and “can maybe solo a couple difficult things before other classes figure it out” isn’t a good enough explanation.

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The complete neglect and random talent " changes" and being like here we did something to try and just cover their lack of actual thought on the class is sad. MM talent tree looks even more of a mess now, trueshot is s till in a really random spot. 17 years of a class and their tree looks almost empty ? its isnsane and majorly insulting to tell us not to compare to evokers who havent even been released and their tree actually looks like something

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Blizzard needs to set their balance dials aside for a little bit, think of some really cool ideas and concepts for the hunter and adding some flavor to the class, then worry about balancing the numbers later. I would rather have some really cool stuff happening that feels cool that’s mid for a little bit while they tune it later. Doing big damage is fun but when it is super lame looking, it kind of defeats the purpose.

Let MM summon a barrage of Wind arrows to obliterate targets or shoot a massive magic arrow. Let BM hunters call an entire menagerie to slap their targets or just one giant pet go really berserk and do some wild stuff. Let Surv hunters do some cool wombo-combo Death from Above/Killing Spree stuff with their pet and finally make the spec feel like what the description says, a spec in tandem with their pet.

There is no flare to hunter, the most flare we have is “Pet get big and Red”

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This is a thing.

This is also a thing.

As BM, you can have Stampede, Animal Companion, Dire Beast, and Wild Call, that’s 4 regular pets plus the DB plus whatever you get from Stampede.

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bigger arrows, no one can see those tiny little arrows from Legacy of the Windrunners

More pets, Stampede looks like an actual [bad word]ing joke. I’m talking Demo Lock swarms of pets. Something that actually looks cool. Hunter compared to every other class looks hilariously lame, there is no one on this entire planet that can tell me hunters have good animations and spell effect and not be the biggest liar in history.

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Are you forgetting when the dev said when they reintroduced Tier sets most of the devs didnt know what was going to happen because they didnt work at blizz when they had tier sets.

Blizzard has had huge churn over the last 3-4 years, i wouldnt be surprised if they have no idea what classic is like

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I feel like Black Arrow should be reintroduced just for class fantasy alone. All dark rangers use it and we are getting wailing arrow seems like a perfect time to add it in and make interreact with wailing arrow in some way. Instant aim shots are cool but imagen if we get instant wailing arrows instead. We spam aim shot so much it feels like it 's our only ability be nice to have a new button light up and shoot a wailing arrow instead of another free aim shot.

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