How bad is Hunter after AQ?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’ve seen people saying that Hunter becomes really weak after AQ because they don’t scale as well with gear as other classes.
How bad is it? Are people exaggerating?

2

People are exaggerating because they are doing analyses based purely off single-target Patchwerk DPS in full Naxx gear, with perfect raid comps and consumables, ignoring all threat issues or anything other than DPS. (This includes ignoring damage done, and ignores the greater uptime that hunters tend to have.)

You will be very unlikely to notice any issue, unless you obsessively analyze meters.

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3

I feel like between AQ and Naxx hunters will start to spec survival to counter this exact reason. The talents make the agi scaling worthwhile.

Also, hunter is a very useful dps class for a variety of pulls, kites, traps and for this reason they really never dominate the charts.

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4

I played a hunter in a high end raiding guild from MC through Naxx. Hunters are fine. Rogues and mages will always be at the top, but hunters are not too far behind during the average real world fight. Guilds will always need at least 2-3 of them for tranq, kiting and marking.

Hunters are an excellent choice for casual guilds and pugs because they require little healing, don’t worry about elemental resists, can FD, and autoshot guarantees at least a minimum amount of dps. A terrible hunter with a jacked rotation is always better than a terrible rogue that dies to cleave.

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5

It’s not, it’s just less good than in MC / Ony / ZG / AQ / BWL.

The only problem hunter really faces is that MM does not scale well at all, and you need Mid BWL level gear to make SV good.

Second problem you face is that everyone wants the hunter to provide 2 things… TSA (true shot aura) a MM talent, and the typical hunter job nerf’n the enrage.

If you have gear and a guild that’s willing to let you do things outside of the walking TSA buff then SV can push some very respectable numbers.

Also remember that Hunter unlike warrior, mage, rogue and lock is always doing damage. Those other classes have higher peak numbers but Hunter overall damage if you play well is usually higher at by the end of the fight.

I hope that helps.

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6

It’s pretty bad. When Naxx is on farm hunters do 1/2 the damage of warriors, rogues, mages.

The resulting level of desperation has led to all sorts of theorycrafting about hunters going melee and spamming Wingclip with Nightfall, and other ways to grasp onto usefulness.

Honestly though it’s a huge shame, they’re my favorite class, and rebalancing hunter scaling is one of the only changes I’d accept in the game. Having 3 non-viable specs for a whole content phase just isn’t how the game is meant to work.

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7

They’re just simply not a good DPS class, they’re brought for tranq shot and other stuff really. In super competitive guilds they usually only have 2-3 hunters. But in casual guilds you can find that they’ll bring many more if they want to.

8

I’m getting mixed messages here :confused:

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9

It depends on what level you want to play at and what you’re trying to get out of the game. Do you want to be in a top tier raiding guild AND be topping the meters while farming Naxx? If so, play a rogue, mage, or warrior. Are you fine doing higher end consistent dps and providing raid utility while not putting additional stress on the healers? Then play a hunter. Every top end guild has hunters in the raid for buffs, kiting, pulling, traps, tranq shot, etc. So if you’re worried about having a raid spot, hunters are fine.

If you’re not planning on raiding hardcore in the best guild on the server, then it doesn’t even matter. You’ll always be at the higher end of the dps meter and be providing necessary raid utility.

If you care about PvP, hunters are one of the best solo PvP and dueling classes.

You also bring tons of utility to dungeons, and are one of the best solo world PvE classes.

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10

To the bone.

duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh

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11

They’re fine and finding a dedicated hunter is hard. Finding a raid spot wont be difficult, but I dont care what anyone claims to have done, I have never seen a hunter topping meters on any fight after BWL. They undeniably fall off. If you’re wanting to flex on meters, you wont be doing it as a hunter.

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12

Hunter is such an underrated class …

Sure, you are not topping the meter in raid environment. But you have aspect of nature to provide resistance, traps, feign dearth to kite, tranq shots. You provide some of the most useful and skill based ability.

And hunters rule in PvP. Once you are a little bit skilled, you can outplayed almost every class. And vanilla is all about PvP

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13

The bottom line is that there are gonna be terrible hunters and fantastic hunters. I suck at playing hunter. I leveled one to 60 in vanilla and I was definitely the huntard pulling the entire instance with my pet. However, I also personally raided with a hunter in full tier 3 who had the highest DKP in the guild. Regardless of what class you pick, your skill level is going to be the biggest factor in your performance.

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14

Hunter’s aren’t terrible, and we’re flexible and bring utility and we also buff the highest DPS’ers with TSA. We also don’t have a lot of melee weaving logs, so we’ll have to see how that increases our DPS but theoretically it’s a large spike as it doesn’t sacrifice anything for higher personal DPS.

The raw agility required to make LR worth it is attainable at Naxx, but you also lose out on TSA and if your pet has any uptime at all you lower your DPS in the end. 20/31/0 (or 17/31/3 if you want more DPS against humanoids) is still going to be the standard. Hunters aren’t going to do as much individual DPS as a warrior or rogue will, so we’ll still be in the melee group for TSA. Even with melee weaving (which would make 13/31/7 the go to) we’ll still want to bring TSA.

Hunters are definitely very useful and have a high skill cap in PvE and PvP, but unfortunately right now on the beta Feign Death is resisting more often than it should (and will resist against players) which means FD -> trap isn’t as reliable which severely hurts our PvP and also even hurts our PvE where we were used for kiting.

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15

Thanks for the detailed reply

16

Depends on the player. Hunters are a really strong class in classic.
Either the player is a huntard (Not good at playing) or he is a hunter, really good.
I remember some hunters back in the day that were very skilled at pve and pvp.

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17

The issue is that pets don’t scale, and we don’t scale as hard as the main three DPS that make up the top tier. A well played Hunter will still do good and competitive damage (especially if they melee weave) and brings more utility than any of the big three, so there’s no reason not to bring a Hunter.

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18

A lot has been said here so I wont repeat all of the positives of having a hunter in raids past AQ. One thing I’ll add is that though not glamorous, hunters may not top meters but they do raise the raid’s dps floor considerably. Hunters can almost always do damage despite the encounter. Sustained damage is super important for some specific phases of a fight. Hunters sustained damage is the raid’s base damage. Meters DO NOT determine a class’s viability. Wow classic is much deeper and complex than high dps.

19

Hunter is all ready bad. Especially horde side where we have WF totem.

20

No they aren’t. They’re only average at PVP, and terrible in raid environment. You can be a god tier player, but if you’re on a hunter you’re not going to be on par with even the most average people of other classes.