In virtually every fantasy game/world I tend towards a ranger. The one who wanders the wilds, protecting civilization from threats they don’t even know exist. Aragorn, Jon Snow, etc. I love them.
Why in WoW do I feel so bored by them? Is it just me? I main a paladin and have more fun on rogues, demon hunters, etc.
But I find myself wishing I liked Hunter because I love the class fantasy so much.
Any ideas? Any cool instances of Ranger type stuff in the lore that makes me feel less powerless. (Why play a hunter when you can play a powerful mage, druid, shaman, etc)
The rangers you’re looking for aren’t the hunter class. They’re the paladins, demon hunters, rogues. Those 3 classes deal with the paranormal or unknown enemies.
The playable hunter archetype in WoW comes in 3 flavors. The sniper, the tamer, and the kid from Home Alone. Lorewise there are multiple hunter organisations. Nelf Sentinels, SMC Farstriders, dorf mountaineers, Troll dinomancers, Orc beastmasters, and Hemet’s Big Game Hunters.
If you’re looking for lore power then it’s Sylvanas.
I haven’t played through the Hunter class hall in Legion, but I hear they were responsible for saving the magic users of Azeroth from a demon that was resistant to all magic.
From a gameplay perspective, I agree that Hunters are probably the most boring class for me as well. Standing in the back of a group, and hitting things with a gun is just not that engaging to me.
As for the lore/class fantasy, I think it depends on how you look at it. You can make a pretty good argument that warriors, rogues, and hunters are not interesting because unlike the other classes, they have no special powers or flashy abilities.
On the other hand though, I think you can turn that argument on it’s head. These people essentially live in a world where there are dragons, old gods, and hulking undead horrors, and instead of facing these things with the power of the Light, the Arcane, or whatever else, they instead go into battle with nothing but their sword/bow/whatever and their wits, and manage to succeed. That can be pretty badass.
Most of your interactions with the world in WoW consist of killing stuff and clicking stuff in quests. These are often character/class/race neutral-ish. Intended to be performed by either Warrior or a Mage. A troll or a gnome. A sincere and generous person or someone who’s more greedy and sarcastic. No matter what who you talk to, what classes you get, etc are the same.
What defines classes in WoW is mostly how you kill stuff and what you look like doing it.
So when you play a Hunter, outside of interacting with your pets, there’s really not much that facilitates the idea your character has a connection with the natural world that doesn’t involve killing it.
Especially if the game’s current narrative doesn’t let your character “wanders the wilds, protecting civilization from threats they don’t even know exist” but instead has them going to the front lines to face the zombie invasion while collecting enchanting crystals to upgrade their lightning bow.
Mechanically, Hunters are also a fairly forgiving class. Their Hunter’s pet also gives them a lot of unique options and tools that make the overall game relatively easier to play. They have lots of survivability and utility. Devs have decided to balance this by having Hunters give up raw DPS.
I have to agree, the hunters are pretty blah. I wish they had more interest. But you’re basically firing long ranged weapons and having a pet fight in melee, it gets old. My NE huntress only uses bows, NE type pets, and wears only NE style armor or close to it and it just gets old. As an elf you could try playing solo without a pet and just your bow but unless you’re in a forest environment it doesn’t really connect.
I’m not sure how they could make the class more interesting either. I’d really like to love the class as much as I do others but…
yeah there is but it’s all in the lore and not in game.
Aragorn is certainly a ranger but I wouldn’t say the same for Jon. He’s more of the classic warrior type.
I think hunter shines more in PVP. Trapping and kiting feels more rewarding in battlegrounds to me. I guess if you’re in a dungeon group with really bad players, trying to rectify the aggro situation can be a fun challenge (usually though, hunters are the ones to blame for screwing things up in the first place).
I do think thematically, hunter could use some help. There have been a lot of ideas on GD and hunter forum.
I think they should split up the class into at least two, Beastmaster being it’s own thing that can tank and DPS.
I actually used to think about this a lot. I would say to myself “I’m playing a character in a world with monsters, dragons, and magic, and I’m really going to pick the character that uses a bow and arrows?”, but overtime I realized it was a far too narrow way to look at it, and such a gross oversimplification of a clearly complex world with powerful characters from all walks of life.
As for raw power in lore terms… there are plenty of instances that arguably demonstrate that not all hunters are simple bow and arrow touting adventurers.
I really enjoy the lore of Thas’dorah, the marksmanship hunter artifact. It’s an incredibly powerful artifact in lore terms.
It was forged from branch of Thas’alah, a huge powerful magical tree that used to play a part in the protection Quel’Thalas, it was located where Deatholme now stands. Thas’dorah was then submerged into the waters of the Sunwell and infused with magical energies. The bow was so powerful that it made even the most mediocre archers masterful, and the master archers truly peerless. It created dozens of magical arrows that would fly with every shot. The bow only grew more powerful over time, absorbing energies from the Sunwell, the Twisting Nether and elsewhere.
The entire lore of the artifact is able to be read from artifact research in Legion. It’s probably my favourite lore story in Warcraft.
Then there’s also Thori’dal the Stars’ Fury, another legendary bow that generated it’s own magical arrows. It’s said that the energy of the Sunwell courses through Thori’dal. I know the next thought is probably “well those are weapons, not the individual wielding them”, but I don’t think it’s that simple either.
Other archetypes would include characters like the Priestesses of the Moon who are incredibly powerful and really, they fall under the class of Priest or Hunter in game in my opinion. There’s also the Dark Rangers, wielding powerful death and shadow magics. Now of course we have Alleria Windrunner, who has been infused with the energy of a darkened Naaru, Sylvanas Windrunner etc… etc…
I guess what I am saying is, there’s plenty of reason to believe there are “hunters” more powerful than many mages, warlocks, paladin’s or priests in game, and the reverse is also true. The limits of a character in this world are not truly defined by something as simple as an arbitrary class title.
Unfortunately Blizzard is going through a “only casters matter” phase. All the top tier hunters in the lore get their powers from sources beyond their hunter skills, which is frustrating.
I do get what you’re feeling though. I also love the ranger archetype. A big issue with that in WoW specifically is just that WoW kind of gave the “outsider who fights evils in the wilderness” story hook to everyone. Every class does the same quests, so the story doesn’t feel different.
So we have to get that feeling from out combat skills. Unfortunately Blizzard kind of… Didn’t quite get what makes rangers such a fun class to play in other games. Rangers are, at their core, a versatile wilderness survivalist who specializes in tracking, surviving, and traveling through the wilderness.
WoW makes you choose between melee or ranged now, which makes you less versatile. We don’t have stealth outside a talent even though sneaking through the woods is an iconic part of playing a ranger. Our tracking is kind of a headache and super non-immersive because it is just looking at blips on a mini-map instead of following tracks or being able to see hidden enemies. We aren’t especially good at traversing the map or moving through obstacles to reach our target.
Even our pet, which is the unique hunter mechanic, is kind of underwhelming. In GW2 every species of animal has unique skills that make it effective at a specific role, while WoW pets are all basically the same with some slight deviation in one or two skills.
When I am choosing my pet in GW2 or DnD I am looking through a list of creatures with varying strengths and weaknesses and choosing what best fits my playstyle or what I am trying to achieve in the moment. In WoW they are little more than cosmetic.
WoW hunters don’t seem very inspired, basically. I don’t get the impression any of the writers are very interested in the archetype or that any of the devs really main hunter. There’s a lot of core elements of being a ranger that are poorly represented or outright ignored by the class design.
Sad thing is the hunter class lost a lot of skills by the expansions even integral raid abilities like tranq shot went away. Not to mention the Pet system used to be more diverse with what pets can do and even that was oversimplified.
I miss summoning my hunter’s moth pet, JOANRIVERS, when we needed another brez. Good times.
Ingame, a lot of the fun of hunters was deleted due to balance and being ‘forced’ into playing the ‘best’ things - no more pulling uge packs and having pet croc Bad Attitude to do big dam, random pet buffs etc… But, of course, that’s a symptom of a greater problem, and doesn’t affect just hunters.
I think Hawkeye speaks for all Hunters in WoW with this:
Could just as easily be;
“Dalaran is-is flying. I’m fighting an army of undead. And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.”
But back on topic, other people have brought up Sylvanas, Alleria, Nathanos etc as examples of powerful Hunters within the lore but for me I don’t really consider them Hunters as much as Hero units now. They all may have started off with a Hunter background, but have since evolved. I think Ion said it best at a BlizzCon awhile back, where someone asked him after watching the BfA Battle of Lordaeron intro trailer and seeing Anduin if Anduin was a Paladin now. His response was something like “no, he’s a Hero unit, and Hero units can do whatever they want” =P
But I still think there are 2 fairly recent examples that fit what you might be looking for (they definitely helped convince me to roll this toon! =D). And at the risk of setting off a firestorm of trolling I bring up 2 characters from the War of Thorns novellas; Chikkers and Delaryn Summermoon.
Chikkers and The Captain
Scene-Ambushing druids from the trees:
KHOOM!
By the Sunwell, that goblin can shoot fast! He paused in his struggles. He heard a new sound, something he had never heard before in battle. A large creature was crashing through the forest, its footsteps overlapping in a strange chorus.
. . . Chikker‐chikker‐chikker‐chikker . . .
Then he heard screaming.
When Lorash finally dragged himself out from underneath the bird, dripping with sweat and blood, the gunshots and screams had stopped. A single creature stood amid the bodies of the druids. “You must be the Captain,” Lorash said.
The huge, four‐legged crawler clicked its claws—pincers?—together and turned its eyes toward him.
It stood nearly as tall as Lorash’s waist. Chikkers stomped his way out of the brush, grinning, his smoking rifle casually resting on his shoulder. The crawler’s light blue shell was almost as big as the goblin, and probably weighed twice as much.
“She ain’t bad, is she?”
At first I thought of him as a BM Hunter, but Crabs aren’t exotic pets so, I guess he could be either BM or MM with a pet out? But anyways, yes Hunters definitely get some good spotlight here with Chikkers and The Captain (the crab). One thing that helps me (for my own headcannon at least) of playing this toon is that while armies of Azeroth may be used to fighting each other, they may not be used to fighting strange beasts, much less beasts commanded by a master Hunter. I think that surprise factor is definitely something Chikkers used to his advantage here.
Delaryn Summermoon
Scene-Fighting along the Falfarren River:
A group of six—three trolls, two tauren, and a blood elf—climbed onto shore. Their warriors, the tauren and two of the trolls, had made a shield wall and were deflecting the worst of the showers of arrows. Delaryn slowed her breathing, took aim, and waited.
There—three inches of space. She let her arrow fly.
Scene-Ambushing Saurfang at Astranaar:
Delaryn nocked arrows, let them fly, and nocked again and again. Seven Horde fell with arrows protruding from eyes and throats before they were even able to ascertain where the threat came from.
Delaryn is definitely a Marksmanship Hunter. That being said, she does still use a Moonglaive in close-combat, which no class can use in-game right now save for Demon Hunters, >< (I swear I will never understand why they restricted such a traditional Night Elf weapon to a class that doesn’t even traditionally use them, lol) But anyways, yes here I think Marksmanship is definitely getting some shine. You can see here a skilled Hunter taking out multiple targets from range. In fact there is another passage in the novellas (can’t remember where now exactly) but it was something along the lines where I think Saurfang was noticing that the magic attacks of Night Elf spellcasters had lessened, probably due to counter-battery fire from the Horde archers. So in the written fiction at least, and with the understanding that super powerful Hero casters like Gul’dan/Jaina etc are the exception, Hunters can definitely go up against casters, warriors, rogues, etc and come out on top.
Now if only we could get some actual love in-game, =\
It’s you. I have just as much fun on my Hunter as I do my Mage. I have my own variety of tricks, FAR more interesting companions, and if I need to feel the urge of teleportation, that’s what my collection of hearthstones, tabards, and cloaks are for.
