From a design standpoint alone, it should be alarming that the main reaction to hunter themed gear design is almost universally “oh look how awful”
The WoW art team is alarmingly good at their job, their hits are magnificent.
It feels really off putting and disappointing that the Hunter designs don’t quite seem to match the rest of the classes, on a gut reaction level.
Either the set is an odd man out thematically speaking suggesting a creative disconnect- a naga themed set in a demon raid for the legion capstone?
Or the visual panache isn’t equivalent to other class designs - This latest trading post set design and gun designs in general, we’ve been locked to short bore shotgun for ages no matter the theme or design of the content and it’s odd that the visual design was more varied and striking the further back you go in the game.
I dont know what to say beyond this really. It’s noticeable that in a team that gets hits so often that when it comes to hunters there are so many misses.
Not to disagree with you, but you did see the gun isn’t a shotgun, right? It’s a harpoon gun that’s visually appropriate with both the spear and the bow
Oof even a tauren hunter doesn’t like the hunter set lol
But yes I agree. I would be nice if we could get some good designs for once. I am still rocking the legion set on this toon, and my helf hunter. My orc hunter just uses the heritage set gear, but the harpoon gun will probably go well with the frostwolf armor she wears. My nelf hunter will use the heritage set instead of the warfront set. MY dwarf hunter uses the dwarf heritage set… Basically, if I have a hunter that has a heritage set, I use that instead. I’d love to want to mog into the current tier, but I just don’t like it. I could make a set without the helm, shoulders, and shoes from this tier but eh. Hunters usually get shafted armor wise.
I find the themes to just be downright funny at this point. When I think of a Hunter, I imagine them skulking through the woods, weapon at the ready, sneaking up on their prey. What do we get?
A brightly colored peacock set that totally blends in with the trees… Or all the times we got skulls and bones, so we’d sound like a wind chime as we track our target. Absolutely fits into the theme of the class. /sarcasm off
There is a reason my current transmog is a farmer for the lulz and if I want to look good I wear Dragonstalker from Blackwing Lair with Drape of the Violet Tower and the mage tower bow that matches.
But for real look at the priest set and then look at ours and try and tell me with a straight face they didnt phone it in and that the two are even remotely comparable.
Funny thing is, Dragonstalker was heavily criticized when it came out. The fact that it’s bright purple, rather than the dark purple used for Nefarian, made Hunters the butt of so many Barney jokes.
That was further exacerbated by the class call mechanic in the Nefarian fight, where every class had some messed up individual mechanic to deal with it, but Hunters just had their weapon broken. Not broken for 20-30 seconds either. Fully broken, requiring Hunters to melee the rest of the fight and then spend a ton on repair bills after every wipe.
Also, the Giantstalker set just looked like we had two cow-catchers on our shoulders…
A variety as wide as the vanilla/BC era, that takes advantage of the modern design capabilities.
There’s a gun in vanilla that’s a dragon head, sniper rifles, weird lopsided sci fi weapons from BC with gnome or goblin theming, more variation in size, design, silhouette and especially FX in terms of projectiles and/or particle effects on the weapons themselves.
The design language has narrowed considerably over the years, to the point that medium short barrel rifle is the base model for most things.
Again, I am not saying that it’s bad art, it’s just I feel there is a noticeable lack of the typical wow art team absurdity in size and scope when it comes to design for hunters. Not that they’re not capable of it, but it’s noticeable when big swings are often taken for say swords or staffs, but so rarely for guns.
Yeah Ive been playing this Hunter since Vanilla and did all that (was originally a Night Elf on Proudmoore).
The trick to the Hunter call was to have a) A backup bow in case your main bow got wrecked and b) Switch toa grey bow right before the call so your main bow didnt get broken then switch back.
It was only supposed to temporarily break but Blizzard never fixed the bug - I guess they figured the workaround was simple enough it wasnt worth the effort to fix.
But yeah Blizzard doesnt know what to do with hunters - we are the only ranged but physical damage dealers but we sort of also act like casters but then we sometimes have pets and we use mana. And then now we dont use mana but wait now we sometimes dont use pets but sometimes predominantly use pets and wait now we are also sometimes a melee but still the only ranged physical caster.
We have changed so dramatically so many times I’ve had 1 toon in the entire history of WoW but basically played like 4 or 5 different classes.
And lets not forgot we literally fired gold at mobs to attack in the form of arrows yet still needed mana? LOL?
When they even remember to add them - the themed dragon armour sets you can buy from rep vendors have matching weapons to go with them - except for ranged. There are even MULTIPLE of some weapons yet no ranged.
I used to think ranged weapons just had some sort of limitation, which is why even the best ones are a bit boring (subjectively). Then I watched my daughter playing FFIV and saw so many amazing ranged weapons. Probably an unfair comparison though, because FFIV is known for having amazing transmog options.
As far as armor transmogs, I would love to see more engineering themed sets. Or maybe a vampire hunter set like the Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman. So many possibilities and they just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
The gun is decent I guess, but these designs are just rough compared to the other classes, plus they look really close to BFA’s alliance weapons. The devs are not even trying.
That’s definitely a heavily disappointing thing that happens, that there’s a lack of hunter weapons in many themed weapon sets when warglaives exist. It’s a weird thing to say that you can make warglaive for 2 specs but not a bow or gun for 2 specs.
there are 17 pages of bows and gun transmog, and 10 pages of crossbow transmog. there are plenty of scifi ranged weps, high fantasty ranged wep, normal ranged weps, etc
there are only 9 and a half pages of warglaive transmog. hunter has about 10 more years of artifacts building up compared to DH. furthermore, about half of the DH glaive mogs are just the same fel themed glaive (obviously) or glaive that’s on fire.
My point is that if you’re designing a themed weapon set then leaving one class out is nonsensical.
I am not saying that DH has it better, I’m saying that it’s notable that of the classes that you could theoretically argue it made sense to short change, it’s odd that only one of them is shortchanged.
The lack of distinct visual design is clear as the years go forward, you feeling like I’m stepping on DH toes has nothing to do with anything
I wish they would give us more quivers and ammo belts. I also wish they would follow Burning crusade tier 4 that was a nice hunter set. They also made a really nice horde mail set for battlegrounds. More of that chain mail style would be welcome IMO.
