Hunter needs a 20% buff and we may still lose out to Mages/Druid/Warlocks after that

Classes Hunter
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Just look at M Sludgefist fight and you’d see Mages, Warlocks and Druids doing 8.5-10k DPS at 95th percentile while Hunters (MM, BM) barely crossing 7k mark.

In fact, the Ranked #1 (100th percentile) MM hunter who got PI-ed still does less damage (8,351dps) than the #1000 ranked mage who didn’t get any PI.

So if you are the best hunter in the world you still get beat by some dude playing at 70th percentile on mage, druid or warlock.

Not balanced is one thing but this is pretty much ridiculous.

The only saving grace right now is that re-rolling is pretty quick. Just sad for those who actually played hunter because they liked the class.

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Slugfist is all about who can burst the hardest each piller; mages, especially fire with combust can burst extemely hard on almost every piller

Hunter burst just isn’t that potent and even with wild spirits we just don’t get enough cd rotations.

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What this guy said. Combust is a 1 min cd of course mages will out dps us on sludgefist it lines up with the boss mechanic perfectly. You should be looking at other fights too cause sludge is far from a generic patchwork fight. 20% would be way to much of a buff. We need a buff but not 20%.

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Bliz knows. They just don’t care. They got their fav class (druids) to be the best DPS & heals and very good tanks. What else matters?

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What % buff would make us top DPS? That’s what we should push for.

As a pure DPS class, we shouldn’t be striving to be “middle of the pack”.

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Doesn’t matter. Not a fight are we even in Top 3. We get beat in ST, Burst AOE, Burst ST everything. Cleave. Sustained AOE. Near bottom in everything including Survivability.

Want to see council? It’s even worse.

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No :chart_with_downwards_trend:

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The BG that my BM hunter does the best in is the Temple with the orbs. There are rage pots all over that map and if you get one then attack orb-holders it’s GG for them.

This is proof that BM hunter could do with an across the board 20-30% damage buff in pvp. In all other BGs I do poor to mediocre damage.

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Sludgefist is all about how you can exploit the vulnerability window and is not really a good point of comparison. But it does highlight one of the bigger issues with the spec and the truth is that Trueshot is just not a good ability in its current design. It’s barely an increase by itself, and it lost a good portion of the synergy it had with Wild Spirits when Aimed Shot would give you double procs.

In turn that devalues other things like Calling the Shots, Sharpshooter’s Focus and Eagletalon’s True Focus.

I’d much rather they make Trueshot better than get some aura buff.

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agree very much

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As others have said, Sludgefist is a horrible example to look at. A 20% buff would be overkill and is based only on boss fights in a raid that is heavily dependent on burst windows.

That being said, I think a 20% buff to our burst cooldowns would be appropriate - or simply make our burst cooldowns actually significant. Aspect of the Wild is arguably the weakest burst CD in the game and needs a complete revamp. I honestly think making that one cooldown more meaningful would fix the majority of our DPS issues.

In PvP, Bestial Wrath needs to go back to making us immune to CC for the duration. They took that away because they felt it was too powerful, then turned around and gave Warriors CC immunity while spinning around like idiots. (Also, Kill Command requiring line of sight is the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while.)

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Once you are in Mythic quite literally every single boss favors the classes that have One minute burst windows. This is why the moment Fury Warrior got a couple buffs they jumped so far on the CD DPS rankings Anger Management+ SoTK give them incredible burst potential.

To quick look though the fights:

Shriekwing goes immune around the 2 min mark reducing the potental up time of 2 min CDs.
Huntsman gets adds periodically and has a hard burn phase at the end so more frequent burst means more control of you phasing.
Hungering also expects your going to move away every 2ish minutes and stop damaging.
Darkvein has adds every minute or so, You lust on a spicific container so it is going to be easier for the 1min CDS to line up with that.
Sunkings is a healer fight but has two DPS checks so that one more or less depends on your comp when that happens.
Artificer is depends on if your designated to do seeds not really easier or harder depending on your CD windows.
Council frequently gives you a buff within one minute windows so once again better to have one minute CDs, It is also worth knowing that you have some dance time to let CDs return which lets those with lower CDS to be more liberal with them.
Sludgefist like everyone has said a pillar every minute.
Stone legion sucks… but ya once again kind of like council but without the buff. There is a lot going on later in the fight so again having a shorter gap between bursts lets them better optimize when and were to use CDs.
Sire is pretty much the culmination of all that has been listed above.

Complaining about CN damage rankings is not going to change anything because the data is skewed in favor of the specs that excel on those kind of fights. Notice how post nurf UHDK actually didn’t drop off the face of the earth like it did in BFA. They have so many options to help them better control when there burst is going to happen and were some of there damage is going to come from.

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You have to understand that BM’s burst being low is by design. It’s how they balance the unlimited mobility. It becomes a game of having to dps at all times instead of being able to dps at all times.

However, one could argue that the sustained damage would need a small bump as a class without burst should definitely sustain higher than one with it, especially with how overrated mobility seems to be at times. Situations like vulnerability or immunity windows also are frequent and they don’t seem to be accounted for in balance, heavily favouring some specs.

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Technically, everything in the game is by design. In this case, however, I think it’s more an oversight.

We used to have burst. Aspect of the Wild and Bestial Wrath were meaningful cooldowns when Kill Command did significantly more damage than our other abilities.

Then Azerite traits and Corruption came along and we got lucky with those. Our Azerite traits were significant and stacked well together. They made our pets incredibly strong. Corruption, on the other hand, made us incredibly strong. Instead of being two halves to a whole, we were essentially two different toons doing damage. In response to that strength, our burst was toned down. We were still very strong, because sustained damage was important in BfA.

Additionally, because our pets were so strong on their own in BfA, there was a lot of complaints on the forums about Hunter pets. As stated above, our pets were only that strong due to Azerite traits, but Blizzard went ahead and nerfed our pets anyway. Spirit Mend was obliterated, survivability was demolished, and revive pet had it’s cast time doubled. That’s a huge nerf considering the mechanic that made them strong in the first place was removed from the game.

Then Shadowlands comes along, where the meta in every aspect of the game is burst. Raids? Burst. Mythic+? Burst. PvP? Burst. Unfortunately, BM was “balanced” around Azerite traits and Corruption, which are no longer a variable, and the spec wasn’t compensated.

Blizzard has stated they don’t want to change the rankings for DPS in the middle of a patch and it will be looked at in 9.1. However, I find this claim to be suspect, because multiple specs have risen and dropped on the ladder over the course of 9.0. It really just sounds like an excuse to do nothing.

As for our mobility being the trade off for burst, we already know that isn’t supposed to be the case. Our mobility is our trade off for lack of defensive cooldowns. Hunters are arguably the squishiest class in the game. Rather than reducing damage or healing it, we’re supposed to get the heck out of the way.

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It is sad that we hunters are not asking to be at the top, but just to be in the middle. Sad we can’t even get that :frowning:

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I always ask to be top… most hunters are so beaten down, they don’t even believe we deserve to be anymore.

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20%??? Holy crap my sides are destroyed. You’re delusional

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Right?! I’m not sure why I keep seeing this magical 20% number. Even assuming the worst from Warcraft Logs statistics, BM is at the 87th percentile and Boomie is at 100th. That’s only a 13% different between the very top and us.

When you factor in how many of those at the top get Power Infusion in those raids, the gap narrows by a few more percent. Hell, just look at the gap between the top and bottom for Shadow Priests. Those that use PI on themselves are at the top, while those that PI others for the benefit of the group are right down there with BM Hunters.

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20% sounds good yeah, great idea. I have some other idea of changes that we need.

  • Make Freezing Trap explode when it breaks and mark all targets in a 50 yard radius so they take 500% damage on your next Aimed Shot
  • Make counter shot stun the target, even if it’s a boss. And if it’s on sludgefist you also get the damage bonus.
  • When you press Trueshot and there is a priest in your party/raid you automatically get PI
  • Remove the CD on Disengage because we lack mobility
  • Make Turtle a passive permanent buff.

All those changes along with the 20% buff to our damage that you suggested should barely put us in a playable state.

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In stats, this is referred to as cherry picking.

You just the best fight for those specs to compare.