So, so far Melee Hunter has been a bit of a letdown - I don’t really care about the Explosive Shot/Chim Shot nerfs since it wasn’t what I was really looking forward to.
First of all and the biggest thing: Flanking Strikes damage isn’t actually 100% weapon damage from either source. I melee for about 30-40, flanking strike always hits in the realm of 14-20ish? Same lowered range just about for the pet who is in 20-30s for melee, but Flanking Strike hits for like 12-15 always.
But second of all not really worrying about the damage is what the ability is actually doing I’m more confused about the design of it. Its a 30 second cooldown ability that provides a 10% increase to Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite - a buff that lasts 10 seconds. Raptor Strike being a 6 second cooldown you will just almost NEVER realistically stack this buff up because its such low chance and in addition the Mongoose Bite portion is so laughably useless due to how horrible it is in vanilla in terms of damage AND the fact it requires you to actively be tanking mobs (we have pets blizzard??). This just gets amplified if you take the Beast Mastery rune which just makes it even more unlikely for you to ever be being targeted since you’re pet is probably matching your dmg if not more - but disregarding the Beast Mastery + Flanking Strike synergy taking Beast Mastery conflicts heavily with Carve also being on gloves, so it makes no sense to ever take it. Not to mention Carve is also just laughably bad - 50% weapon damage on a 6 second cooldown sucks even acknowledging the fact its uncapped AoE. Its just bad. Lol.
Iirc datamined traps also did not make it to live either something that could’ve been big for all hunters in general.
Overall a bit disappointed with the Melee Hunter things in general. Really wish Mongoose Bite was changed to be useful somehow and the traps datamine made it in, plus just all the above. But oh well. Still having fun but I feel like the mark was kinda missed. Maybe later runes will help but it doesn’t look to good RIGHT now.
Edit: The traps datamine was them being able to be used in combat btw.
7 Likes
This is the reason every hunter rolls with full pet runes with a scorpion. There are simply no alternatives.
5 Likes
Because multiple scorpids contribute to the same stacks of poison there’s no reason to bring more than 1 of us…
Copy pasted from another post, my take on melee Hunter Fix:
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Moonsgoose bite is utterly useless right now and needs to have its damage increased significantly and have its activation condition removed. I personally would also add flavor to the ability wether it be by a new rune or something else.
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Moongoose bite should be able along with raptor strike to have 20% chance to reset flanking strike.
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Add a mid range lunge for you and your pet on the flanking strike ability because we have no gap closer whatsoever. Also fix the ability itself, the damage is lesser than whats shown on the tooltip.
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Remove the mana cost of flanking strike because we run into mana issues pretty fast in dungeons even more when the Carve rune is slotted in.
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We absolutely need to be able to trap in combat and possibly have trap launcher. There are tons of trap related talents wasted right now in the survival tree.
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Every melee spec in the game now has an interrupt and we don’t.
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Looking at the tooltip of the talent ‘‘counterattack’’ in the survival tree, i can already see the same scenario of moongoose bite with its very poor damage, please take a look at this.
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Adding a way for DW to be viable for those who want this playstyle would be a good addition.
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Carve could reduce the CD of traps by a set amount based on the number of target it hits (max 5 second per Carve lets say) so in theory when the hunter will get Explosive trap, this could be a cool way to Aoe mobs down (assuming traps in combat is actually a thing).
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Add a rune that makes all stings melee instead of range but with increased potency. So now theres an incentive to dip into marksman talent tree as survival for stings related talents.
Scorpid Sting: additionally reduce armor by ‘X’ amount.
Serpent Sting: The poison damage ramps up over its duration.
Viper Sting: Increase the casting time of afflicted targets by 20%
Wyvern Sting: now becomes a stun instead of a sleep
2 Likes
It could’ve been worthwhile to spec deep into survival, but Blizzard for some reason scrapped both in-combat traps and Raptor Strike being independent from next melee. Pretty disappointing.
All I want now:
(1) in combat trap;
(2) better agility-crit scaling.
Given the same amount of agility, every other class gets MORE (even double) Crit Chance than hunter for no reason.
And (3) 13-yard leap on flanking strike (similar to retail) to cover the dead zone.
Thank you Blizzard.
The talents are really lackluster for melee, it just was never designed for it as a focus. I agree with a lot of your points and with those suggestions I think they can help but a lot of talent points will just be useless even going survival. So, personally I prefer using the BM talents and synergizing it with a melee hunter than going in deep survival which starts to become irrelevant deeper in. Synergizing meaning bestial wrath applying to hunter, frenzy pet buff applying to hunter, and other things i wrote on some other thread. More of the rexxar type so deep BM then remaining points in SV for a melee hunter instead. Survival feels more fitting as a mixture of melee and ranged just by looking at their talents. So utility cc and damage from traps, bombs, poisons, polearm, throwing weapons (spears/chakrams), close range shot abilities like rogue’s quick draw rune and camouflage. BM melee being a mixture of you and your pets damage and any other beasts you can call.
Also idk if a gap closer is necessary, it depends if its a pvp thing to slow an enemy you have something but if you mean just getting into a fight then its not like every melee class has gap closers. I could see harpoon or something coming along though
Yeah, to be fair the class at 60 will probably play way better as i suspect they will add additional runes and perhaps add new rune slots on like helmets/chest/boots etc…
The gap closer is mainly for PVP for sure, getting kited to death does not interest me very much haha.
1 Like
Yeah since we got 3 runes now, we can maybe assume it’ll be 3 in each level band and probably mostly on armor slots so total 12 runes as abilities or passives. I’m still concerned though how loaded these runes will have to be to have proper scaling and damage modifiers as well to make it viable, idk if it can do it all. Maybe some interesting passives can help but I think they should have a backup plan of a separate small talent tree system at lvl 60.
Based on how Hunter runes work now, my prediction for the next phase of runes:
1 rune will buff pet health and damage. Then hunters will receive a universal pet health and damage nerf. On day 2 of that patch.
1 rune will make it so ALL ranged attacks spread viper sting. Viper Sting will receive a 90% damage nerf when people get to the raid instance.
1 rune will increase the damage of wing clip by 50% after being the victim of a critical strike. But it wont work 100% of the time.
1 Like
Raptor Strike should reduce the cooldown of Flanking with each use. Maybe something like 5 seconds
…not have an abysmally low chance to reset it.
This mind set it what ruined retail. Every class a closer, an interrupt, a heal, etc. A button for every scenario. It turns in to the same bland game you can be playing right now by switching clients.
1 Like
Most of the changes i stated are a direct response to blizzard wanting melee hunter to be a thing. Right now its not even a matter of every class having X or Y same ability, the melee hunter spec is clunky to play and very subpar in term of performance. When most of my damage comes from my pet, even when specced fully into survival, there is obviously an issue. Im just trying to make some suggestions as to what could be improved.
As melee hunter is still fairly capable at range, I don’t see that being a big issue. Concussive shot is kind of a gap closer.
The clunkiness around flanking strike causing an auto swing thus delaying your first raptor by a full weapon swing time is an issue, theres work arounds to avoid the autoswing coming out but they are awkward, clunky and unreliable. Also if your pet isn’t attacking your target it will not cast flanking strike at all.
Carve should be reduced to 3 targets but have damage increased to 100% weapon damage to make it a useful choice for both packs and single target. Even with that change Beast Mastery will still be the better option I think. Maybe have carve reduce the cooldown in flanking strikes? Or chance to reset raptor? Not sure, but as it is, it needs a rework.
Mongoose bite isn’t even worth learning. It’s a waste of gold and mana.