I wrote a community council post here Let’s talk hunter.
Please take the time to read it before responding here.
Hoping to get some eyes on it, show your support if you agree, and if you disagree let me know why here.
This conversation shouldn’t just be limited to the CC forums but it’s the only way I have to even hope to get Blizzard attention on this.
As much as I scream at Blizzard for never communicating, I’ve had quite a few of my posts on the CC receive a blue post, although those were posts for Classic, so one can hope.
I have been rather vocal lately here on the Hunter forum where as before I wouldn’t bother with retail issues despite playing it alongside Classic but this is something that weight heavily on my heart because of how much Hunter and WoW means to me.
As much as I like you getting visibility for hunter’s problems. My biggest issue with your post is you put your own bias against survival as a spec. You have to realize that some players love survival as a spec now and when you publicly post you represent all those players including me. I like survival as is.
With the new talent trees there are ways to bring back Survival that you loved without killing the one that I love.
I can see what you mean, I reworded the sentence I believe you had issue with.
Edit: To be clear, I have no problem with survival being melee. In fact, I would love to see some melee abilities to be given back to the base class as a whole.
Thank you, I appreciate the change and what you changed to is true, it has had trouble finding it’s niche. There are a lot of gameplay elements I enjoy but thematically it’s all over the place.
Edit: For what it’s worth, I think it’s silly we can’t arcane shot, steady shot, and barrage with our melee weapon.
I mained enhancement shaman for the longest time in real vanilla through cata. It’s never fun being ignored.
It wasn’t fun as unholy DK in SL S1 to be nerfed into oblivion at the first raid tier, to claw our way back to competitive standards for the longest time.
Any positive changes to hunter would be welcomed, to all specs.
I disagree on your stance on SV, for obvious reasons.
If you’re going to go all in, then start advocating for a 4th spec to address the salty old RSV’ers.
There are actually people out there who enjoy current SV and wish for that version to be expanded and iterated upon.
Additionally, either consult people who play the spec and actually know its intricacies who can detail its actual issues instead of “a failed experiment”, or spend some time yourself actually going deep in the spec.
Good starting point, these things should have included an SV counterpart from the jump.
WFB and WFI needs alot more love for the amount of nodes dedicated to the skill, for example.
I agree, I worded it poorly and I apologize for that, hopefully the edit I made makes it better.
I have played survival quite a bit actually and I enjoy the idea of a melee hunter although my preference remains with Marksman with a pet as a whole.
The idea of a 4th spec would actually be great, although it’s so unlikely to happen I wouldn’t hold my breath on it.
A big problem with all the hunter trees in general is how point heavy and repetitive they are. Wildfire Bomb as you mentioned has 6 talent points just to acquire it and increase its damage and charges.
Survival has 36 talents to spend into while Fury Warrior has Forty-Three
This means many of it’s points take 2 or more point investments while getting less overall effectiveness per point.
Thank you for this. I upvoted the post and hope something can come of it. At this point the only thing left to do is find out where in Irvine the wow devs have happy hour and buy them all drinks and ask them to stop ignoring us.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. Fingers crossed we can get at least some bug fixes and ability tuning. Even that would make a world of difference.
One main comment is that survival was made a melee spec which I love by the way. It doesn’t have any additional survivability to be in melee. The only differentiator is mending bandage. So whatever excuse hunters have been given for bad self sustain and defensives is amplified by the fact that survival is melee.
Example, if their reasoning is “kite better” which is impossible to do in arena with how they’ve evolved the game, melee has to go melee eventually to do dmg. Bicmex just got slammed and rode all game by tsg without a prayer of “kiting”. So not only does every hunter spec need better self sustain and defensives, survival needs even more
Well, survival does have its mastery healing over time effect.
But yeah, it doesn’t even compare to other melee specs. I’d say maybe bringing back counterattack as an ability and make it parry all attacks in the next second and when reactivated after a parry root the target. Hunters used to be able to root 3 ways, with snake trap, frost trap, and counterattack. Before snake trap they had improved wing clip. Even back then it wasn’t considered too much despite melee having far far less mobility.
It’s hard to make use of the 8 yards melee range when you can’t really stop enemies from sticking to you like glue.
BM needs help with AoE in a big way. We’re also great at ST, but that’s mainly when we give up almost all AoE talents to solely focus on ST.
The multi-point talent nodes just suck.
Edit: I’d also like to add the gripe about “the bow” being placed as very rare loot, and then tuning done around that item is incredibly bad game design. We really need the Dinar/upgrade system brought back. I’m fortunate to have the heroic Bow, but I’m also capable of empathizing for hunters that can’t get this to drop or appear in their vault. Hunters are literally sitting Mythic raid to increase their chance to get this cursed item.
Your pet’s Basic Attack deals 100% increased damage, can now be used from 30 yards away, and will instantly teleport your pet behind its target. Your pet can teleport only once per 20 sec.
Oh and while I’m at it, why can warriors spell reflect our traps?
I’m bouncing between my hunters on Retail and Classic, and while I don’t want to be so reductive as to say “Wrath hunter is more fun!” I do feel a distinct lack of cohesion with Retail’s current hunter talent trees that greatly impacts the level of fun I experience when I do content.
And like, lots of better hunters than myself have written plenty of paragraphs on why the class feels so lousy on retail. The Bow, the pigsty of MM’s middle talents, the dead baseline talents depending on what spec you choose, and our survivability - it’s all been written about. I just want something to change.
