I’ve played since vanilla and always started each expansion on my hunter. Hunter has always been my favorite class and the one thats been the most fun to me. I actually stopped playing end of Mists then came back for BFA.
I was appaled how boring my hunter was when starting BFA. Sure I wasn’t used to the GCD changes at first which really suck, but the class is just so dam boring to play. Our abilities lack any visual appeal, our burst is crap until later in the expansion you find the optimal combo of garbage rental pkwers and whatever layers they force upon us. By that time every other class also gets a big boost from their optimal rental powers and hunters aren’t really gaining any ground against the competition.
The changes heading into SLs suck hard. The specs will still be boring as heck to play IMO. This is the first expansion I’ll honestly be likely to start as another class which is sad. Sure I’ll poke around on my hunter to tame the 3 or 4 semi cool pet skins in SLs, but I don’t want to invest the kind of time into my hunter as I did in BFA when the class is such a mess as is.
The same thing could be said for Ww monk, Enhancement shaman. i get the feeling that your perception of viable means it needs to be represented in the top 1% of raid tiers with an always guaranteed spot in mythic in order to be viable when that should never be the actual case.
When you say raid utility you should say raid buff’s because it’s kind of misleading people to believe that it doesn’t have actual utility when it has the most utility in the hunter class. You’re arguing against the community perception of the hunter class as where they see hunter they expect Ranged "Yeah me too it’s why i picked hunter in the first place", same could be said about Ww monks and Antorus when it was top damage.
Melee survival as a spec does not suck at all in any pve content It touts alot of damage from borrowed power and is only a step away from the same skill as Bm hunters. From 8.0-8.2.5 the spec was solid so you shouldn’t put that idea out there.
There was a guy on hunter threads promoting himself With a Bm hunter and he was pushing over 2.5k Explaining the break down of stats and Traits to choose from; But in comparison to melee Survival. melee Survival is perfectly tuned for pvp and offers more utility making easier to push with on top of it benifiting more from borrowed power than Bm and Mm in a pvp setting. melee Survival is the easier route so you see more going survival in pvp.
As far as the pet rez thing I still don’t know what the point of having a stable of 5 pets is if we can’t summon a new live one to replace the dead one. I’m sure they declared it OP at some point but for some reason I remember being able to juggle living and dead pets at some point in the past.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong and thinking of a different game.
Enh sucks right now just as much as survival and feral does. But in shadowlands they get windfury so there will actually be a reason to bring them.
WW monk has raid utility with their mystic touch debuff but both BM and MW bring the same debuff so there is no reason to bring a ww aswell as long as those 2 are good. Unless again their dps is insane which it isnt right now so the spec sucks. Their spec specific utility in windwalking also might aswell not exist.
A spec doesn’t need 100% representation in the top 1% to be viable. But it needs atleast some kind of representation which right now there is none. The highest survival right now is in a top 150 guild. The second highest iirc was in a top 200 but had to swap to bm during prog? And the 3rd highest was at like 600 . If a spec is this underplayed/unwanted i think its safe to say its unviable.
Its not just raid buffs. Theres also raid defensives like darkness, immunities for soaks, wl gateway/healthstone or even small things like stampeding roar, bop or innervate. All survival brings is an immunity and if u bring a class just for that u bring a rogue instead because their immunity is more reliable, has a lower cd and rogues in general are also way safer than survival.
The raid utility survival brings compared to the other specs is negligible. It doesn’t matter if your kick is 24 sec or 15 sec in a raid. As a matter of fact u would rather have a 24 sec ranged kick than a 15 sec melee kick in a raid. Lower cd kicks only matter in m+.
I dont take 1 or 2 guys getting 2.5 on bm as proof for the spec being viable. Im pretty sure Tassili got 2.5 on MM this season aswell yet i dont think mm is viable.
BM was very good at the start of the xpac but they gutted their pvp pet dps in like the first patch.
There is zero reason to change it for leveling content, leveling content is meant to be easy, trivial even in most cases.
It is a massive unneeded nerf in PvP.
There are unavoidable instakill mechanics in M+ that target the pet. Players can survive them with higher health pools, cooldowns, or healer assistance, pets simply can’t.
I mean, Ion said recently in a post “Trust us guys, we can balance this stuff and it’ll work as intended” basically, so… yeah they need to get that working.
What a troll comment. There is nothing balance about 4 second pet res. Especially when we were given 2 second pet res. I take it you don’t pvp at all? Would love to watch you say it’s balance with 2 melee sitting on you foaming at the mouth waiting to kick you as soon as they see pet res.
Insult to injury, the fact that 2 out of 3 specs NEED the pet out to function properly, is all the reason it should have just stayed 2 sec.
Memories not foggy but it was 4 seconds in Mop, you still have freezing and tar to to keep the distance in order to get the res off. Along with melee survival having more than enough Utility to be able to get into a position where it can pet res easily.
If you see you’re pet is dying while being pulled behind pillar and you’re getting Los’ed the best thing to do is to send in basilisk to attempt to stay in combat and recall your pet the moment you notice they’re planning to do this.
There needs to be a slight disadvantage to those who benefit heavily from their pets and do not pay attention to their pet’s, 4 seconds is fair.
this works in a pve environment. When people notice your pet is dead, all focus is now on the hunter and stopping him from ressing the pet. Can a res go off, eventually. But if the people are smart they will rotate kicks and interrupts to stop you.
thats a BM only PvP talent
i completely agree, play well and profit, play reckless and be punished for not watching your pet. Howver, pets are not nearly as tanky as pets were in previous expansions. There used to be different glyphs and talents to keep pets up. the glyph for mend pet used to remove poisons and magic effects.
alot of little things to help keep the pet up that we dont have anymore. That is why most people are not happy with them going back to 4 second pet res without giving the things we used to have to keep them alive. 4 seconds is not fair
Not as tanky true but i feel as if Pet damage is alot stronger than before as well so i can see the trade off. Im not a Bm advocate but i’d like for blizzard to bring zoo to the spec by upping the haste on dire beast by 10% to make it a 15% haste increase for you and your pet.
While also reverting Stampede back to Mop days and allow spitting cobra to instantly summon the cobra as a ranged pet that moves within proper range of where ever the target goes. I’d like zoo similar to Unholy Dk. Basilisk, and dire hawk isn’t enough for zoo i need more lol.
From what i’m testing on Ptr and from what im seeing in Beta with conduits, and legendaries BM’s is going to be perfectly fine with 4 seconds. The damage and the past problems with Bm Vs Plate is No more along with it’s overall pressure going up thanks to returning spells like arcane shot, Kill shot, and Tranq shot.
one of the things that will definitely help route around the 4 seconds will be animal companion.
Alot of you guys are blowing this 4 second thing out of proportion. With the amount of damage the pets will pump out in Shadow lands 4 seconds will be Fair.
if it was 2 seconds it would be over powered in my honest opinion because of the testing i’ve done.
Bm is going to be pefectly viable for Pvp at all levels.
From all of the things im seeing i couldn’t blame blizzard if they literally came on to hunter’s forums and said "what more do you want ? ". i’d respond with ranged survival;
but other than that from what i see they’ve done a good job this time on the hunter class as a whole going into Shadow lands and Being a solid class choice over all.
If there was to be a tier with classes going into shadow lands hunter sits in the A tier for sure.
My only gripe with them being soul conduits aren’t instantly changeable.
4s rez is too long, in that you pet can be killed in 3-4 GCDs through Mend Pet and SotF, and the Hunter can then be interrupted/stunned/CCd/etc to prevent the cast. MM, with it’s whopping 3 tools to break a cast, can lock you out for over 20 seconds,ore than enough time to kill the Hunter. Rogues (among others) have even more tools to interrupt you.
BM no longer uses Arcane Shot at all, as Cobra does more damage for the same Focus cost, while reducing the CD on Kill Command.
Kill Shot is positively anemic for BM compared with SV and especially MM, since it gains no benefit from mastery or other passives.
I think the 4s rez could work IF AND ONLY IF Mend Pet and other tools are buffed such that pets aren’t a free kill, and require opponents to commit by burning CDs, CCing the Hunter, purging Mend Pet, etc. If there is no opportunity cost to killing a pet, and minimal opportunity cost in preventing the rez, Hunters become a free kill.