Our class for a long time has been known as a “fun pvp class” where we can sit back, pew pew and have a relatively good time doing it. The issue is, we have been now defined by that at least in our ranged specs. When playing random battlegrounds we find that is okay. These non-challenging and often care free engagements are just quick fun that do not require good tuning or the need for great utility. Arenas can be fun and some hunters excel (in short quantity, I myself do not enjoy Arena gameplay as much so never really pushed), but hunter as always required that additional bit of skill to really master in PvP. Something many take pride in being good at.
RBGs we are dead last, and by a long bit. In my last post I put out statistics of ratings in last season and it has us not only dead last but that our rank 1’s rating was less than the rank 25 Druid, Mage, Monk, Priest, Shaman and Rogue. Rank 1 hunter was only ~30 rating higher than the rank 25th Warlock as well. Link Here:
I play more casually in PvP than I used to and a lot of it is due to Hunter design and it’s embarrassing status. The class is not only not viable, it’s not fun. Even our “base sitting class” status is challenged by mages, rogues, rets, and sometimes druids due to their abilities that supersede ours. So why utilize a hunter when their base sitting is equal or less than other classes who also have better burst or utility in other situations?
In world PvP, those I play with laugh on discord when I target a druid only to find that they are resto because they know I wont have the burst to kill it off. We do not have the ability to survive or quality burst. We are lacking.
It’s really time to make a change blizzard. Hunter’s need viability, and hunters need to be fun.
I never heard that before I thought hunter was known as a:
“Barbie Class”
“One Button Macro”
“Keyboard Faceroll”
“Control your pet aggro”
“Pew Pew and QQ”
If you want “fun” go play a different game. WOW was never known as fun.
That’s a little harsh. But I guess we don’t have the same definition of fun. See, if wow wasn’t fun to me, I wouldn’t play, let alone spend any of my time posting in the official forums.
Beside’s, every class is easy to play now. Days are long gone where playing a hunter is considered the “easy” class. In fact, my bm hunter has more to watch out for than my mage…
I don’t do arenas because I like the overall excitement of the bigger fights (epic battlegrounds). I definitely am not a Hunter that plays the “pew pew” way though. I am never close to the top for killing blows or overall DPS but I am almost always near top for HKs in every battleground.
I am BM spec and I use a chimera %99 of the time I play and use it for trapping and chasing down opponents. I guess I do quite a bit more trapping and assisting than anything else. Some examples:
Primal Rage
I am usually the first person to “lust” and sometimes the only person that even casts it giving the entire raid %30 haste, that alone is a huge bonus for raids. I pay very close attention to this and always make sure I pop it at the right times to ensure we get that burst DPS as many times as possible and that really becomes a bonus on longer fights.
If I play on defense I use traps to keep the incoming opponents from just running in on a flag or wherever I am.
Binding Shot
Keep a grouping of people stuck together for a few seconds. For example, in Isle of Conquest when your opponents are desperately trying to get to your boss because the wall is down put an arrow right in the doorway of a group running into kill your boss and watch them all get stuck at the entrance for a few seconds. Use this in conjunction with other things and you can do a great service to your team when every second counts.
Hi-Explosive Trap
Throw into a grouping of casters to interrupt multiple people that are casting spells. (Healers and spell DPS people usually behind the line of tanks and offense.
**Movement Slow **
The Chimera casts a 5-second movement slow on a 10-second timer so if I send the pet to someone strategically they are movement slowed half the time and sometimes opponents ignore the pet not realizing that the pet isn’t necessarily there to kill them. You can also send the pet laterally between opponents movement slowing many people every few seconds.
On several occasions I have had an opponent walk around a battleground the entire battleground because they either didn’t, or couldn’t, kill the chimera. I guess they didn’t think much of the DPS so they ignored it but they didn’t realize it was the chimera that was making them walk. One particular time I remember is a Paladin in Warsong Gulch was in midfield the entire fight just walking. Couldn’t get to his team’s FC to help, couldn’t get to opponents, nothing. Just walking everywhere…the entire match. I about died laughing as I watched this happening.
Concussive Shot
I don’t just attack a single opponent and pop everything trying to kill them. (unless it’s one person) I concussive and DPS but as soon as Concussive Shot refreshes I change targets and movement slow another person and I keep doing that over and over to pin down groups of opponents as long as possible.
Spell Interrupts
Similar to Concussive Shot I rotate 5 different things to interrupt casters: Freezing Trap, Counter Shot, Intimidation, Spider Sting, Hi-Explosive Trap. When an opponent is trying to heal someone hit them with each of those 1 or 2 seconds apart and you can do a great service to your team.
No Retreats
In Ashran I spend quite a bit of time ensuring the other team can’t run away. When they try to fall back to the next flag they will hate you when they step on a Tar Trap and get slaughtered because they can’t run away. With Kronus in front of them smacking them around this is particularly devastating for them. No mercy. Try doing this when there is any NPC near your opponents that they are trying to get away from. Pin them down and let the NPC kill them like in Alterac Valley when they stick their head inside the room Van is in. Pin them in place and see how fast Van kills them.
The Element of Surprise
When you’re defending a flag and are camouflaged you will often see a member of the opposing team run strait to a flag thinking it’s not being defended. Right when they touch that flag you can surprise the crap out of them and burst DPS to kill them or simply be a nuisance to them and pin them down or interrupt them until your team comes to finish them off.
Peeling
In places like Warsong Gulch you can really make a difference when you use your trapping to get your opponents off of the flag runner. You have so many tools that they can’t simply trinket once or even twice and stay on the FC. There is no class that you can’t peel and that alone can make so much more of a difference than if you play to kill.
Just some ideas, this is a very exciting way to play a Hunter in PVP. (for me anyway)
Those are just a few examples, I have plenty more. Granted, I don’t do rated battlegrounds, just the quick matches, but I find playing a Hunter as a CC far more beneficial than playing as a DPS. I never go out there thinking I want to kill opponents. My thinking is that I want to help my team kill opponents. I find playing a Hunter in this way to be pretty fun.
Just because people are happy, doesn’t mean they know what’s right. There’s a certain 5-letter word that starts with a ‘b’. I wonder what it is…could it be…BLISS?
I’m retiring after S3. Hunters have no future, particularly as a stealth-capable class. In order for me to be bought back for Hunter PvP, the whole entire class needs to be overhauled. There’s going to have to be a revolutionary toolkit that would allow us to compete as all the others have done. Being a damage bot is no longer going to cut it(for one, it never really did cut it) and there’s no damage bot that can outperform a human player that has more better abilities besides damage.
For 4 years, presiding over 3 expansions(WoD being the best of the three I’ve done it), I kept thinking it was going to get better. It never got better for the class.
Whatever hero class is coming out next year, it’s going to put the hunter class out of a job. Hunters, chances are, are going to be discontinued completely. Blizzard is going to have to do something, but I expect certain things to be done or I’m not coming back to PvP with it. I want to be repaid for my failed optimism for the span of two expansions.
There is certainly a misconception among non-hunter players that hunters are a low skill cap class that relies on computer AI to do everything, which is complete BS, and they use that to argue for hunter’s low pvp damage.
They overlook that many other classes have pets (mages, warlocks, dk’s) that operate on the same computer AI, they just don’t massively depend on them. Pets are not much different than a dot, except that other players can more easily defend themselves from it and remove the pet as a threat.
They say that hunters are 1-button classes. My bm hunter has as many buttons to push in his regular single target, non-burst, rotation as my Fire Mage.
My Fire Mage: fireball, scorch, fire blast, pyro blast and depending on talents: living bomb or phoenix flames.
And timing (with barbed shot) is more important during my regular rotation for my BM hunter than anything a Fire mage has. Plus there is the whole resource balancing that my BM has and Fire mage doesn’t have to worry about.
And as far as mobility goes, they’re not that far apart.
As far as damage goes… they are light years apart. Its very possible for a fire mage to delete anything on the game board with the right combo. You can’t say that about any hunter spec.
The fire mage has way more going on for burst, but the class is designed to have those tools. I would love to have those kind of burst-rotation tools for my hunter.
It simply comes down to class design. If hunters were designed with the extra burst, tools and mechanics that other classes had, no one would say “1-button class” or use that to justify our poor pvp dps.
If nothing else, hopefully we’ll see some changes made to at least one of our specs in the next expansion as grim as that sounds. Personally I’m hoping bm get’s reworked into something more interesting, but I’m probably biased.
I feel bm is solid to be honest. It lacks in kiting vs double melee by a small margin and could use disengage on a shorter timer and cheetah on a 1 minute timer.
Bm hunter is very similar to fire mage without gpyro. The run in gun style for both. I always felt like bm damage while kitingfeels like the same output of dps as fire mage without gpyro. The problem this creates is that when left alone the bm hunter doesn’t have any ability to burst harder and gain damage like mage does with gpyro. If u added a fifth damage move that can only be casted like gpyro while standing still bm could have that pressure that casters have when being stuck standing still. But keep their other damage toolkit the same. This would make it more of a threat to be ignored while still keeping its play style. The move could be something like old power shot with no cd like gpyro.
Other than that make post haste baseline or binding arrow baseline. So the hunter has the ability to peel as we are lacking in peeling abilities.
The other thing that might fix it is I’ve noticed with spirit beast moves like survival tactics and the heal bm feels like the right tankiness. Plus spirit shock sucks but is needed. But in pvp u can’t use it much as u need mortal strike and freedom so ur stuck with those pets. Yet survival can also use the same exact freedom mortal strike pet. So not much point in playing bm for exotic pets if survival can get the same needed benefits. So my point is make bm exotic pets give these four things Survival tactics, spirit heal, mortal strike, and spirit shock.
Now the absolute top survival players are in the 2700 to 2800 bracket of arena area on us ladderboards. The absolute top bm is only 2400 bracket and it’s only one guy. Bm could use some sort of buff and mm hunter could use more than that. But I get giving bm all these things would be super op. Just a few of these things could fix some core problems with the spec.
Let’s be real haters will claim pet ai and bm deserves to be trash. Pets just a ai the hunter uses all moves but pet basic attacks. No difference between me pushing a button and pet using a move or a warrior pushing a button and the axe being swung. And u don’t push a button for war auto attack either. Not like a the player swings a sword in real life nerd.
Either way it needs to be put in context and taken with a gain of salt. The run of mill neck beard that trolls the forums with ruffled feathers is no more of an authority on what the game really needs than the content simpleton who’s just happy to log in. Still though neither of these two will have their feedback taken into consideration on the class forums of all places
Truthfully it comes down to what a hunter is utilized for in a group setting. We are not (or rarely) top damage, our utility is easily replaced by a more equipped class, and our base sitting ability is now challenged.
What is the benefit to having a hunter in your group over another class that can operate better in different functions?
It’s just how I’ve felt in my experience, but one of the biggest issues I’ve come across when trying to pvp on bm. Is that if someone just roots, saps, etc. my pet, that I’m just poop up a creak compared if they just opened up on me. Sure you might not be dying but with the damage loss of your pet being taking out of the equation you might as well be dead with the damage you deal alone.
I mean the wpvp healer killing this isn’t really a logical argument… not many classes if any can kill a same geared ilvl healer in wpvp solo with 0 dampening like in arenas.
