Hunters have had some of the most balance changes of SoD (and more rapid changes in p1 compared to a lot of WoW’s history).
As a refresher, let’s take a look a the litany of changes we’ve undergone.
- Day 1 explosive shot nerf, changing a well established and beloved ability into a weird aoe cleave that no one asked for, and has extremely niche use to this day (would’ve been helpful on Eranikus if he wasn’t nerfed to the ground)
- Chimera shot reduced from 125-85% damage. Due to this change, BM hunter (and in p2 melee hunter) were the only viable dps specs because the pets scale better than the hunters themselves.
- Pets nerfed across the board: Scorpids (remember those?) were supposed to have their damage changed from being immediately devastating to requiring 5 stacks of the poison to do real damage. Post nerf 5 stacks of poison was doing less than 2 stacks, never fixed. Lightning breath from Wind Serpents nerfed as well.
- Pet survivability was also nerfed, and made hunter pet tanks no longer viable.
- Hunter pets no longer can receive world buffs.
- Kill command nerfed to the ground, now only benefitting the claw and bite abilities. Not only did this make the rune practically unusable, but severely limits our choices in pets. If you want to use Kill Command, it basically better be a cat. Both of the times since Blizz has introduced new pets, they have not replaced Cats as being one of the best options (Wind Serpent for PVP or for high armor bosses)
- Chimera shot, unusable until this point, was changed from 85% to 100% (still weaker than launch, but allowed MM to be somewhat viable.
- Explosive shot buffed by 25% (still not used)
- Mana cost of chimera shot, explosive shot, kill command, and flanking strike reduced by 50% (there would be little point to this, with future fights having quick kill times, Aspect of the Viper being introduced, and master marksmen rune already reducing mana costs)
- All of this was “compensation” For the gargantuan nerf to the beast mastery rune, reducing pet damage done by 10% and focus regen by 30%. Overall this change made hunters weaker, and did not compensate the class’s main problems. Blizz has always struggled to balance pets, and players in PVP would complain incessantly on how a class that invested multiple runes and all their talent points in buffing their pet would have their pet as their main source of damage.
Sidebar: Not a change, but at this point (we’re still in P1 btw), hunter class rotation was EXACTLY the same as it was in vanilla, with the only shakeup being using flanking strike for melee weaving. Melee hunters were not a viable spec then, and carve did (and still does) little to no damage. I condensed multiple nerfs/changes into the posts above, but taken individually, there’s more than 16 of them, IN 1 PHASE. It was awful trying to relearn our class each time, poor class discord was in chaos. - Now entering Phase 2, we can talk Lone Wolf. Datamined before launch, Lone Wolf was supposed to be a 30% damage buff. On launch it was 15%, and unusable. P2 launch saw lone wolf back up to 30%.
- Chimera shot was changed to not refresh the dot timer on wyvern sting, further making the survival spec useless. Instead of trying to introduce a fun new interaction (like is often done with paladins), this was just removed and “never intended”
- Raptor strike damage was now weapon damage normalized. Intended to make faster weapons more usable for us, it did not solve the fundamental problem, as slow weapons with high damage ranges is still coveted bis for melee hunters.
- At this point in phase 2, melee hunter became very strong with Dual Wield Specialization and Melee specialist runes, both needed to make the spec usable. People even went lone wolf survival builds as hunters finally had some much needed scaling. This was nerfed by removing the 30% damage bonus to raptor strike. Blizz’s justification? “well now you don’t have to use 2 weapons of the same type”. After this, every melee hunter was forced to go BM to do competitive damage. Melee hunter was now less bursty than almost every other melee class in PVP too, AND had no survivability and no mobility. Additionally, Melee Hunter is strong on WCL because it’s easy to play. For some inexplicable reason, we STILL can’t use mongoose bite without parrying, and even if we could, it does no damage. Without adding more buttons to press for class complexity, the spec is vulnerable to large jumps or falls in its power.
- Chimera Shot was buffed to 120% of its damage (still weaker than launch),
- Explosive shot had another 15% buff (still useless)
- Carve damage bugged by 15% (still useless). The cool thing about changes 15-17 is THEY’RE ALL GLOVE RUNES, so that buff did less than nothing to help the ailing ranged hunters at the time, or the melees desperate to press something else.
- Steady shot damage was buffed by 15% (still to this day is not used). Why was blizz so afraid of giving ranged hunters an option with their only other choice being invigoration?
Sidebar: At the end of phase 2, nothing was fixed. Ranged hunters were still underperforming. Class changes were tone deaf, and melee hunters are in a weird spot to this day, with an extremely simple rotation with high damage, but still dependent on going BM because pets scale better. - We’re now in Phase 3. Sniper training originally gave 30% increased crit in pre p1 datamines so long as you stood still for 6 seconds. This was changed to 10% on launch, but the moment you took A STEP you lost that crit, making the rune frustrating and unfair to use. This was changed so that you could now take steps and lose stacks of 2% crit instead.
- Trueshot aura used to only give melee attack power (imagine). Instead, SoD changed that in P3 to now massively buff ranged attack power too, along with a boost to melee attack power. Melee hunters these days are being pressured to play a spec that goes 31 points into the marksmen tree just to provide Trueshot Aura to the rest of the melee in the party (if this spec is taken, it can be up to a 300 personal dps decrease). Additionally, top melee hunters gain more than 150 dps from trueshot aura if they were beast master (as they should’ve been), creating a very toxic buff situation.
- Chimera shot at 135% damage now (it took 3 phases and 3 changes for chimera to finally be buffed back to and above its day 1 power)
- A 50% buff to explosive shot (which at this point after 3 changes is 90% stronger, and still not good to use outside of trash packs.
- Rapid killing rune reduces rapid fire’s cd to 1 minute (which sounds cool, but it holds competition with lock and load, which is the way stronger choice, which made this effectively useless)
- Serpent spread (again still not used) had its serpent sting duration doubled
- Steady shot now deals 100% weapon damage (STILL not used)
- 5 stacks of sniper training now makes your aimed shot instant.
Pretty cool changes, but then Blizzard says “we want to diminish the melee playstyle” - Raptor’s fury bonus damage reduced by 25%
- Pets had another 10% damage reduction
Was it exhausting to read through this giant list? Imagine dealing with it the entire time. It’s an absurd number of changes (mostly nerfs). Hunters still struggle with scaling, and are the only pure damage class in the game now. Additionally, they have a large number of frankly underwhelming/useless runes:
- Rapid killing (other 2 head runes fit their respective roles better, even with sunken temple 3pc bonus for melee)
- Cobra strikes, literally unused since day 1. Never changed
- Master marksmen is now barely equal to heart of the lion, as thanks to aspect of the viper the mana reduction on it is pointless. Never reworked.
- TNT - only reluctantly used by Lone Wolf ranged hunters for lack of better option. It’s an insulting rune too - out of all the possible fun and interesting choices that could’ve been made, why was the final choice a 10% damage bonus to our traps (which still don’t have damage scaling and do little damage) and explosive shot??? Not every option has to be tuned for optimal dps, but surely make them interesting?!
- Carve - used by lone wolf melee hunters for lack of a better option. To this day, it still does little damage (even in AOE), and just serves as a better filler than wing clip to proc windfury.
- Explosive shot - with runes and buffs now does double the damage from launch, but still not good. Here’s a thought - swapping main ability runes isn’t good or fun when the options are mediocre aoe tools on the same slot? (for those of you saying it’s good for aoe farming solo dungeons, my response is who cares. Who has come to sod with the honest to go thought “golly gee willigers, I sure hope sod revamps my boring solo farms!”)
- Steady Shot. Not only does this has a built in delay outside of its cast time before firing, but Blizz put expose weakness on the same slot! Even with buffs, you still don’t use this staple ability from other expansions
- Kill Command: After the scorpid incident, Blizz has nerfed all potential fun interactions with trying new pets in SoD, a game designed to revamp classic. Hope you all like cats and wind serpents (core hounds aren’t good by the way)
- Serpent spread - Could’ve been a fun aoe rune, but compared to cata serpent spread where multishot hit more than 3 targets, very underwhelming.
- Invigoration - the most insulting rune there is - 5% mana back when a pet crits with a special ability?!?!?!?! In the same patch where aspect of the viper was introduced?!?!
- Heart of the Lion being a chest rune: Obviously Heart of the Lion is VERY good, this is a special case thought talking about its overall design. Extremely limiting class design, especially for horde. Hunters would love to be given more options to actually use their other chest runes, but because raid wide kings is so substantial, hunters have little choice and have to hope another hunter covers for them. Thankfully this at least gave more stats to the hunter. Again, good rune, restrictive design, unlike the runes above.
Some of the runes listed above are run not because they are good, but because it’s technically better than having an empty rune slot. Again, I fully comprehend that not every rune will be the best choice for DPS. My hope was that it would at least be an interesting or fun option. A lot of these do not solve the fundamental problem of hunters lacking scaling (which ironically they gave scaling runes, to warriors!!!). Invigoration and TNT honestly just feel lazy.
The point is, this isn’t an I’m quitting post (although those who respond to this will probably suggest I do). This also isn’t a post saying that hunters weren’t really strong at some points (they were, and to an extent are). What I’m saying is that this rollercoaster of changes, often nerfs, has not been fun. It’s a mystery to this day why mongoose bite can’t be used and melee hunters have more buttons. Or why it takes blizzard so glacially long to add changes that do not solve the fundamental problems of the class. Yes SoD is unbalanced, yes the devs are understaffed and overworked. But being a consumer of the game, and having your class messed with this often is exhausting. Melee hunters want a more enjoyable rotation, and they don’t want to be trueshot aura slaves. Ranged hunters want scaling, and beast masters want actual pet options. We want our runes not to be boring throwaways or mistakes that never get corrected. And we want some real communication on these changes, not poor “compensations”. Hunter’s don’t have to be top damage (despite only being damage dealers), but it feels silly to say at Blizzcon that every class should be as OP as warriors, and then warriors topped WCL at max ranks since P1.
I know a lot, or most of you who read this far (or those who skim past this) wont care. People on reddit/forums will still say hunter pets are frustrating and op. People will say that their class is weaker, and you do good damage so deal with it. I’ve even had frustrated guildmates make yellow journalism on the forums here when their class was nerfed trying to get hunters nerfed some more. Some who respond will give their wholly uneducated and ignorant responses on hunters, a class they either don’t play and/or don’t understand. That’s fine. This post doesn’t mean your class doesn’t have problems too, or that some of the nerfs there were unneeded. This doesn’t mean you should attack this post like some big lobster pot. This is a post about the frustration of all the hairbrained hunter changes. If you want to talk about the rough time your class has had, go make your own post about it. Just because your class has had a rough time doesn’t mean other classes can’t complain.
The entire point of this post is just to say: all of the tone deaf changes, sudden nerfs, and the lack of scaling/interesting runes is very frustrating, and we’ve seen more changes than most. We’re tired, and we’re all eagerly waiting to see people do better. If you’ve read this far, thanks for your time.