Been a hunter main since late vanilla. No matter how many toons I play, I always end up coming back to the hunter.
I skipped SL entirely and am now maining monk and warrior for the first time. Being that they’re both decently geared now, I’ve been getting the itch to pick up my old main again.
Thing is I keep hearing mixed opinions on the state of hunters in DF. I really want to switch it up and play a ranged class since my other two characters are melee. Would you recommend I level up my hunter? If so, which spec should I go with?
Since vanilla I’ve been BM about 80% of the time, occasionally rocking with survival during Wrath and Cata. I dabbled in mm here and there but it just never clicked for me.
I also love collecting exotic pets. Loquenahak took me literal years to get.
So… Beast master is the best bet, but the thing is, its only decent with a nasty rare bow locked at the end of a raid.
I truly do not know how blizzard can allow a DPS only class to be so far behind in its only role.
That said I pretty much ONLY PVP…lol
And we suck, you will get trained every match, and you will run out of cool downs, since you are dps and turtle stops our dps without healing us…
We are probably one of the least mobile class also, after warlock and deathknight its us. considering 2min cd on cheeta/1.2 min with several point investment and the pvp talent, and the 30 second disengage.
What really annoys me is druid gets more passive move speed then us as well in their passive tree… idk man.
Survival has 3 engages and the balance of that feels really wonky.
The true crux of the survival build I been running is the forced pet instantly dying to every melee burst open then survival being unable to use half of its kit before needing hard cast for 4 seconds. And its a short window burst set up, so basically we are really weak ranged paladins who can not heal or take a punch as survival…oh and they cant really see wings so that is cool, but the coordinated strike window is kind later then most as well so your pet could be dead before you get the go.
MM just can not burst people anymore so… they just die.
Beast master is turned for PVE with that bow, and I have not seen a PVP’er with it yet.
It is really bad honestly. Best we can do is shoot stuff not focused on us in battle grounds because you will never beat an equally geared melee class for example because their kit all have more gap closers and slows then we can manage.
The most annoying thing about the hunter class is the survivability. It’s takes massive amounts of rot damage compared to everyone else, and in my experience, more direct damage than everyone else. Everything else isn’t that bad. People are upset about the DT removal and having to take steady focus, but I haven’t experienced it being that big of a deal so far. Maybe it’s because I am still gearing in 15s and haven’t moved on to 20s yet. I’m one of the players that still remembers how important steady focus was back in the day and grew accustomed to it, so it’s not really making me sad that we are using it again.
I don’t get these tier lists. Instead of adding S and SS to the top to crest more categories, why don’t they just add letters at the bottom? It’s weird. Otherwise, I also find tier lists sometimes lacking key information like utility, ease of use, or real dps vs actual dps.
What is this tier list for? Because it looks wildly inaccurate for probably anything.
If it’s for pvp, lol at enhance at “ss” tier among many other weird things.
Tier lists suck and are click bait for content creators, nothing more.
To op, hunter is pretty mid right now.
You said you like BM; the playstyle is pretty good right now, though beast cleave is a bit short and frenzy windows are tight, though that’s kind of fun to work at. Tier makes it a bit smoother (have 2set so far and it helps).
For pvp I’ve just swapped from mm to bm with dt removal and it’s not bad. Defensives are still lacking, but if you play smart (scatter>steel trap, tar trap roots) melee won’t want to chase you.
Tbh I’m enjoying hunter a lot more than my previous main - Boomy, which is hot garbage talent wise in pvp and just got made worse.
It’s fun if you like it. Good for casual stuff - m+ to ksm, pvp to 1800ish or more, random bgs very fun, etc.
Up to you. Class forums are pretty much all sky is falling all the time.
Is hunter perfect? No, it’s definitely not top tier, but it’s decent if you enjoy it.
ok, well, this is wow heads description of survival in current content. “Basically nobody’s playing this spec in Mythic content - its damage is lackluster, its defenses are lackluster, its utility is lackluster, and it has no raid buff.”
DPS numbers have Survival in the lead at 88,632 DPS in sim at 14th place.
BM is 88,430 DPS in 15th place
followed by marksman at 85,391 DPS in sim bringing in 19th place out of 24 DPS specs… While not being able to off heal, not having a raid buff, and not have comparable defensive kit.
Why are you quoting wowhead about sv in mythic raids when the dude said he prefers bm and is most likely not mythic raiding?
The argument of “something isn’t meta so it sucks” is bad for 95%+ of players.
He asked how is hunter, I said it’s mid. Decent for casual content like ksm, 1800+ rated pvp, casual bgs.
You responded with mythic raiding…
If that’s the only measurement for whether something is good, then almost everything sucks and is unplayable.
But it’s not. Most players aren’t mythic raiding, and don’t need to worry about current edge content.
Most players are playing m+ 10-15, casual pvp, rated pvp to 1800, normal or heroic raiding. For that content, bm and hunter is 100% fine. Not perfect, could use some help (which I literally said), but fine and enjoyable to play unless you’re somehow measuring yourself against something you’re not doing.
everything you said is spot on, also they gave druid forward disengage and also ele sham forward disengage, and I bet money on it that the CD is lower than hunters totally bugged disengage. I want to add disengage has bugs like when you disengage and try to strafe left for example, you will land and be straifing right until you let go of the left key, it makes situations where i disengage and try to strafe right to LOS pilar but this 15 year old but makes me strafe the opposite way for a sec until i can correct it and I just get 1 shotted by a dps, great class once again
I have been lucky to have acquired the bow from Raz, it makes a substantial difference as BM in ST situations. Our other hunter has not been as lucky, and the difference in output is staggering. I feel like hunters have been tuned to compensate for the bow and that doesnt feel great. Even when you have the bow, in M+, target priority swap, or multi target situations it does not feel good at all (I know that it feels better than not having it, not the point I’m making.)
There is no burst to ramp up the damage. No substantial burst ability window where swapping off ST is a viable option to keep consistent sustained damage output. I’d love to see beast cleave and kill cleave crit, make misdirect a baked in ability, take barbed off the GCD, or maybe have our dire beasts allowed to beast/kill cleave. Anything that would help build a burst window or ramp up faster.
Survivability wise… I don’t know where or how to start and I get frustrated even thinking about it. Hunters severely lack survivability yet they don’t have the damage output one would expect a glass cannon should. When I think of the hunter “class fantasy” I think of Hugh Glass fighting a bear and surviving in the wild, not the toddler throwing up from balling so hard from getting pinched.
I hope devs are able to take this and others feedback to heart. I dread the day this bow gets a higher ilvl replacement stat stick, and that feels bad.
I just think you are being cognitively dissident now.
I quoted wow head because I do not play PVE seriously as I have stated.
This is bad. Being bottom half of dps when all you do is DPS is not good, or even middle of the pack because other classes bring utility.
And its not about meta, its about having a class roll.
That’s… not a phrase. And I don’t think you know what “cognitive dissonance” is since this is clearly not it.
He asked if hunter is ok. I said it’s mid. You then quoted wowhead on mythic raiding tiers which you don’t do, and he doesn’t do, so it has zero relevance to his question.
Hunter - and pretty much every class - is fine for the majority of content that isn’t cutting edge.
What content are you doing that hunter is holding you back from?
Can hunters get ksm? Yes.
Can hunters get 1800, 2100, 2400? Yes.
Can hunters do open world content? Probably better than anyone right now, yes.
Using mythic raiding to justify a class being bad for casual content is nonsensical.
Hunter could use improvements and tuning, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for most content that most players run. It’s fine. Mid, but fine.
google it.
We get it, you are super casual and no amount of nerfs will ever bother you.
Hell, I’ll even agree, we are pretty good at casual BS like solo open world questing and getting carried… when its not a survive quest that is.
he doesn’t like to try, random dungeons are enough for him, the same way people complained about DT from random BGs, he doesn’t care for nerfs or the poor state of the class, because he doesn’t care to try, we should all be like him
What makes me still upset after my shower is him complaining about “meta” then following that by complaining about how he is not used to me phasing something because its not the typical way.
What, “cognitively dissident”? Because those words together don’t make sense the way you seem to think they do.
Because “cognitively dissident” is not a phrase. At all. It’s not about “not the typical way”, it’s not a phrase. No one says that. Anywhere.
Google it.
What content do you even do? What content is hunter stopping you from running? Are you running mythic raids? M20+? Pushing for glad? Duelist? Rival even? Challenger? Anything?