Ok. I’m taking a bit of time out of my current solo torghast run hoping against hope that someone who works at the small indie game company that used to be the MMO juggernaut ‘Blizzard Entertainment’ sees this post:
Whichever unpaid intern that’s been making the changes to marksman hunter over the last 15 years is either a sadist who got into the industry to troll gamers, or a complete moron.
I’ve played a hunter since vanilla and it has never been this frustrating to try and do solo content. A single floor in torghast takes my hunter longer than a full run on my rogue even if I make the adamant vaults. The survivability has dropped to embarrassing levels, so has the mobility, and the utility of our skills.
So, if you want to keep this boring aimed shot rotation garbage as the ethos for the spec, here’s what needs to change to make the class even slightly passable:
Exhilaration - Change the cooldown reduction mechanic back to the way it was in legion ( killing an enemy reduces the cooldown by a set time) or drastically reduce the base cooldown to say, 45 seconds.
Aspect of the cheetah - Reduce the cooldown by 2 minutes. It’s a travesty.
Tar trap - Increase the radius to what frost trap used to be.
Freezing trap - What idiot decided this should start combat? It shouldn’t.
Misdirect - 0 cooldown when used on your pet. It used to be this way when glyphs were a thing and it was great.
Here’s why all of these changes are essentially mandatory with this farce of a damage kit marksmen have right now. the static aimed shot casts means that if we’re casting, we’re likely getting smacked, and if we’re not casting aimed shots things take forever to die. Add that to the fact that adds no longer have infinite leash distance when taking damage, means you can’t kite in a straight line anymore. you have to kite in a circle. smaller trap radius means that if you’re fighting two guys, you’re going to take damage.
Aimed shot time means that the distance you need to get between you and the add before starting to cast in order not to take damage, means more adds are likely to find and attack you.
Marksmen hunters desperately need some more ability do redirect and control the combat we do get into, and mitigate the damage we take when we’re in it.
This shouldn’t be that difficult. Anyone who’s played a hunter for 10 minutes in torghast can tell you that the spec as it’s designed now doesn’t function.
I havent seen the issues you state. I actually find Torghast a fun challenge to use all our abilities. Most of the things you are asking for are in anima powers and probably too op outside in pvp situations to be base line.
Hunters in general do feel very squishy but there are a few ways to help combat this issue… Exhilaration conduit gives extra healing, feign death & hunter’s mark conduits reduces damage taken… Binding/bursting combo when mobs are stacked on you. Freezing trap doesnt start combat unless you get in aggro range. Tbh though torghast is 1000x easier to go as bm.
As soon as you play any other damage class barring maybe warriors, you realize how much more care you need to take as a hunter in deciding how many adds you can pull even in world content.
As a rogue, I can pop crimson vial every minute. DKs have great self healing in any spec. same with any of the hybrid healing DPS classes.
Back in the day the larger radius on the frost trap meant that you could at least keep ahead of larger groups of adds long enough to whittle them down. if you pulled 30 really weak adds the exhilaration cooldown reduction would let you burst them down and keep yourself alive. A 0s misdirect for your pet would let you keep pulling groups of 2-3 adds while questing without worrying about having to kite 2 while your pet tanks one.
The way things are now, you have to either kill single adds between your binding shot cooldowns and covenant abilities, or go beastmaster. neither feels good.
Give us some god damned utility and survivability back in world content. you shouldn’t need mythic raiding gear to be able to fight 5 non elite adds without major cooldowns.
Your post is largely correct but I’ll add that it’s not that Hunter utility has declined in and of itself. Hunters are still generally more capable than they were in BC (e.g. can use ranged attacks in melee, can move during Auto-Shot and everything else outside of Aimed Shot, no mana, etc). The problem is that the Hunter toolkit, particularly when it comes to mitigation and self-healing, has advanced way slower than that of every other class and it really isn’t meeting the requirements of many areas of the game at this point. We more-or-less still have the same defensive toolkit we had in MoP while every other class has gained a lot in that time.
There’s also the issue that Hunter powers in Torghast are generally weak and uninspired. I didn’t realise how severe of an issue this was until I played a Shadow Priest and saw their powers. They get truly game-changing powers in comparison.
P.S. What do you mean with Freezing Trap starting combat? Trapping an enemy doesn’t start combat but it will still start combat if you run past a trapped enemy (yes it probably shouldn’t do that).
The squishiness of Marksmanship (and Hunters in general) is a known issue and is widely discussed in the context of competitive raiding and PvP. In addition Hunter Torghast powers are probably the weakest and most uninspired in the game. This isn’t just a player issue. I like Torghast too but Hunters clearly aren’t well off here and it’s fortunate we have BM, one of the strongest solo specs in the game by default, otherwise we would be truly screwed.
This is a problem with Hunter design discussions. What Vyaz asked for is not particularly OP. Every time Hunters ask for anything like this people worry about it being OP but even if we got all those buffs it would still be way less than what most other classes have. Two of the things on that list are things Hunters in fact used to have but no longer do. Tar Trap really is a lower radius than Ice Trap and we used to have glyphs including the Misdirect glyph that helped a lot.
I play Torghast as BM and I probably would still do so even if they made MM better in Torghast/other solo content. BM is just inherently better in every expansion when it comes to soloing stuff due to the pet focus. This doesn’t excuse MM being so bad in Torghast though. And yes, it is bad. This isn’t just an issue for Vyaz. As I said above, MM’s squishiness and the awful Torghast powers are widely known problems.
Jatarri, You are full of it. You have no raiding experience or experience that you have played a hunter longer than this expac. You don’t know anything about your class and I highly doubt you can solo Torghast.
As a MM Hunter, playing solo, if my targets have anything close to my Health, 32k, then two is all I can comfortably pull. Those aren’t elites either. I notice out in the world, most mobs have maybe 12k-20k Health. Casually pulling 5-6 like these at one time, lets say a mixed group, casters and melee, is fool-hardy. I don’t do it, but it is not unusual to pick up adds when trying to kite.
Real in-world elites, at 50k or greater health, one of those mixed in with lesser mobs, or two elite melee, aren’t worth the repair bill.
Hunter squishyness is a WELL known issue across all styles of play. Anyone who doesn’t think so really just can’t take critique about their class.
The Chorghast Anima powers are the WORST powers out of all the classes. This isn’t even close. 50% dmg bonus to misd target for length of mind. Whats that, 6 sec if I recall correctly. In other news, demo gets perma 50% done by pets through the whole run.
Blizz publishes nothing but garbage for hunters anymore. Leggo bow: garbage. Quiver: just as bad as bow. Squishest class, or pet spec AND our “meme melee spec” have been in the bottom 5 on the dps logs since SL hit.
But then again blizz is a dumpsterfire all over the place.
Camouflage is so weak. It keeps getting detected so I’m forced to use invis pots for skips like the three mobs after the third boss in Sanguine Depths.
Bursting Shot misses half the time.
Our self-heal is terrible and the cooldown is too long. Compare to the self-heals, plural, of balance druids.
Lusting as MM is annoying. Let Hunters choose lust as their lone wolf ability.