TLDR: A couple of bugs/unintended mechanics are propping up hunters. When exploited they create an awkward play style that can perform viably in some situations, poorly in others, and hardly better than the tank in a few.
Hunters don’t need to be buffed, not really. Our simulated/maximum potential damage doesn’t really need to go up. Our ability to do that damage in most situations, in a manner that isn’t clunky, un-intuitive and easily disrupted, is what needs to be addressed.
ToGC illustrates how extreme the situation is. On Northrend Beasts, Jaraxxus and Anub; Survival Hunter performs decently. Not great, but it’s fine. On the Twin Valk fight, traps do not work at all, traps being one of the unintended mechanics we exploit. We are forced to use Black Arrow. This makes hunter the worse DPS on that fight by an absurdly large margin.
Sidenote: while it is unfortunate some specs are garbage, it is arguably acceptable so long as each class has at least one spec that can perform each role the class is supposed to cover. It’s not great, but it’s okay, that Blood DPS is bad since they have two exceptional DPS specs. It was completely unacceptable that retribution was as bad as it was since that was their only DPS spec (you should have helped warriors out early too, but now it’s kind of too late, their scaling is kicking in and you’d have to revert whatever buff soon). This viewpoint is derived from acknowledging that developer time is a limited resource, and complete balance is a fairy tale. So, if hunter only has one spec that can be competitive DPS, it’s less than ideal, but acceptable.
So, what are the bugs and unintended mechanics of Hunter?
Lock and Load: 3/3 provides much more than the 6% proc chance the talent states, I’ve read that it is actually 21%, I’ve not dug too deep to confirm what the actual number is, but it is definitely higher than 6%.
Explosive shot: Different ranks of this ability (namely 4 and 3) stack on the target. WotLK aggressively dismantled the use of down ranked spells. This is especially true for instances where downranking was the norm, instead of the exception.
Explosive Trap: An area of effect ability that is awkward to use. It must be dropped, not just in melee, but in the middle of an enemy, by a class that actively avoids being in melee range. This is troublesome on fights with any movement, as 1 enemy step is all it takes to leave that trigger radius. It’s also problematic on very large enemies with large hitboxes. It’s safe to assume that this spell is intended to be used in large AoE situations, not for 1 or 2 targets. However, its power is such that it is used for that very purpose, especially with its glyph. Using this spell in this manner is the highest DPS performance approach for all three specializations of hunter (by a large margin). This won’t change. Even a Marksmanship Hunter in full ICC gear with 100% armor pen will still glyph, use, and gain 500 dps from explosive trap (admittedly I’m getting that from wowsims github io, but it would have to be very wrong to be off by that much, and it’s proven to be a fairly accurate tool).
Now, with the notable exception of the Ret Paladin, essentially all the changes that have been made to WotLK have followed one straight forward principle.
Bugs and unintended game mechanics that are being exploited and/or lead to unhealthy player behavior should be corrected.
This philosophy covers just about every change that has been made: Demonic Pact weaker buff overwrite, extreme Gargoyle Snap Shotting, Fiery enchants on Warrior weapons, Bear Weaving, and many instances of different ranks/versions of the same spell effect stacking (by the way, you missed a significant one of these, fix hunter and I’ll tell you what it is. For those of you who are curious, you can check my logs all you want but you won’t find it, me/my guild don’t exploit it and you shouldn’t even assume it’s hunter ability I’m talking about).
Thus Blizzard has three choices:
- Eliminate the bugs and unintended mechanics, then adjust Hunter damage in other areas to compensate.
- Leave the Lock and Load bug and 434 behaviors as they are. Both increase hunter damage, but not excessively, while 434 arguably makes the spec smoother to play. Embrace Explosive Trap, implement small changes that make its use truly intentional.
- Do nothing and lose consumer confidence. Sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. I used to pre-order Blizzard games before Warcraft III remake. Not anymore. Right now, the only thing really keeping me playing is my guild and the desire to see the expansion end. I have no desire to play beyond that, because I have no confidence that Cataclysm (assuming that happens) won’t face different, yet painfully similar, unaddressed issues. I very much doubt I am alone in this.
So, number one would be ideal for upholding a consistent logic for what is changed and what isn’t. There is real value in that, but let’s be honest. Blizzard will not and should not do that. It would take some serious reworking of the class, followed by significant testing and it could still horribly miss the mark.
Number two seems the more reasonable option. There are many ways this could be done; I’ve thought of three that would work well, though there are certainly others. Browsing Reddit and these forums, I have seen these same ideas expressed by others.
- Automatic Explosive Trap triggering – Make a minor glyph that causes any explosive trap placed in combat to trigger after a 1-3 second delay.
- Explosive Trap Launcher – We currently have a launched and melee range Freezing Trap. Do the same thing for Explosive Trap. Two different versions of the spell, a minor glyph that alters it, or alter Explosive Trap to only be the ranged version (we don’t really need a melee dropped one).
- Black Arrow – buff or alter this ability to match explosive trap on single target, otherwise what’s even the point of having it? Currently, the spell is laughably weak. This is the least helpful change, as it does nothing for MM or BM.
I put those in the order I believe matches the quality of the idea, though all would be good.
Doing just the Automatic Trap Triggering would preserve the weaving playstyle. Some (insane and misguided) people like trap weaving. I can’t understand it, and it makes hunter’s de facto melee, which is unhealthy for raid comps and many raid mechanics.
If one, or all, of these changes were made top-tier hunters would see essentially no increase in performance on the fights hunters can function well on, although they would see a marked improvement in the consistency of their performance. However, it would substantially increase their ability to perform on fights that are very hunter unfriendly. It would also drastically smooth the learning curve for the class.
Edit: Found old blue post talking about this very issue. Can’t put real URL here, but if you go to bluetracker dawt gg and go all the way back to February 24, 2009 you can find it. The post is Survival Hunter 3.1 Notes vs PTR. Going to post the Blue Text here.
- Trap Launcher is a very cool idea and something we would love to do. However, it requires a lot of tech and may end up beyond the scope of what we can do for patch 3.1. We don’t want to give hunters a buggy, half-baked ability. If you are going on the PTR to test Ulduar or just mess around with numbers, I wouldn’t worry about this ability, at least for now.
- Black Arrow is on the trap cooldown timer, and we assume largely for PvE. Black Arrow is your ability to proc things normally caused by traps (like LnL) in PvE situations when using a trap is a pain or the target is immune.
- Think of Lock and Load triggering from traps (esp. Frost Trap) as a PvP mechanic. Think of Lock and Load triggering from periodic ticks (esp. Black Arrow) as a PvE mechanic. In PvE, you may want to use traps on trash or group pulls however. In PvP, nothing is stopping you from using Black Arrow if it works for you.
You won’t be trapping raid bosses to get LnL procs, even if they are immune to the effects. You probably won’t be trap dancing much at all in PvE. You should really use Black Arrow for that purpose.
If the proc rate ends up being too low, that is certainly something we are willing to adjust.