Melee Hunter Feedback - Living Post

In Development Season of Discovery Phase 4 PTR
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I’ve edited this post upon further analysis. For those interested in what I have to say, I will continue to edit this post as I discover more things.

Thoughts on Melee Hunter on Day 1 of PTR:

  1. Hard to judge how good/bad it is, because you can’t summon a pet, Wyvern Strike doesn’t refresh with Chimera and there are MM trap issues as well. Please fix these so we can give it a try.

  2. The Lone Wolf vs Pet problem is still there. It still feels like you get pigeon hole into playing with a pet, or not with a pet. For example, if you’re going with the cobra slayer build, lone wolf is not an option. Why do it this way?

This may be controversial - but why not simply add carve, chimera shot and explosive shot as regular hunter abilities and just add them all under the same CD. Why can’t a range hunter have both chimera shot and explosive shot at the same time? As long as they’re on the same CD, there’s no need to disallow it. Same with carve. Just let me carve when I’m doing AOE, without the whole ordeal of switching runes etc. I think the solution should be to make chimera shot, explosive shot and carve regular hunter abilities (all on the same cooldown), and then turn the hand rune into a choice between Beast Mastery and Lone Wolf (balancing them of course). This way, every hunter, regardless of playstyle/spec can choose between playing with or without a pet. I understand the math here would be tricky, but the way it is currently feels really silly. I don’t want to switch gloves every time I see 3 or more mobs running towards my raid.

  1. While the Wyvern Strike reset by Chimera Shot is currently bugged, I’m already wondering if it’s the right call. I use my melee abilities currently, run out, hit chimera shot, let an auto go off, and then cast arcane shot. It’s a nice little easy 3 quick abilities that all feel really smooth with the GCD. By the time I run back in I already have either kill shot, raptor strike or Wyvern Strike active already. Seems like Chimera Shot should have a different effect with Wyvern Strike. Maybe have chimera shot increase your chance to crit for 10 seconds after hitting a target affected with Wyvern Strike?

A further problem I have with this build is that this rotation is hard to do when you’re fighting a mob by yourself and you’re tanking it. You struggle to get distance between you and the mob so you can’t pull off the range weave. I have a hard time seeing myself running this in the open world. Does that make it not a viable spec?

  1. Killshot should be a learned ability, not a rune. Ranged need sniper training and melee flanking strike. Unless you guys intended for KS to be a PVP ability? But nerf it so it can only be used when the target is below 20% health and then do something to flanking strike to make it viable for the 2H Survival build.

  2. The range weaving with chimera shot feels very fun so far, except the refresh mechanic on wyvern sting doesn’t work. Please fix.

  3. Survival is supposed to be the trap masters, not MM. Give us a talent that give us snake trap? And maybe the snakes act like homunculi? Wildfire bombs could be possible too. But we need SOMETHING that tells every raid lead “I need at least 1 survival hunter”. A cool feature could be to change the “clever traps” talent in the survival tree to give melee attackers more AP against a mob affected by the immolation trap?

  4. Finally, the idea of an “aspect” is core to the entire theme of the Hunter and melee hunters don’t currently have one. Please create an aspect for Melee Hunter that compliments our spec. Monkey is for tanking and Hawk is for MM. One idea here could be to give Melee Hunters “Aspect of the Tiger”, which gives us and our parties (but not raids) the same 3% crit that feral druids give their parties (making sure that the two don’t stack, of course). This will will give us some much desired raid utility, and also allow Feral (cat) druids to play the Omen of Clarity build whenever they group with a melee Hunter, which I know will make them very happy. :slight_smile:

Conclusion: My main concern is that in order to justify bringing a deep Survival hunter (which, according to Aggrend on X, was the goal) you need to add a raid buff/debuff/utility. I would argue that if I cannot bring my melee hunter to raid without it being considered a “meme” then the development of the class has failed. Please give us ONE raid utility.

*** 1) My testing shows that Wyvern Strike 2H lags behind at LEAST 200dps (it’s more I think) than the dual wield Beast Mastery spec. Without some serious raid utility, no one would take a Survival hunter into raid.

  1. It also appears that with range weaving, and with a 2H weapon you see a lot fewer attacks dodged (for mongoose bite), lone wolf will be the chest rune of choice for survival. Which means that the set bonus for the newly revamped Tier 1 Giantstalker melee set would be completely useless. You guys are on to something here, but it still needs a lot of refinement.

Day 2:

*** I experimented with the Wyvern Strike build a bit today, using Lock n Load as the head rune and there’s REAL potential there! But we’ll need a better chimera shot/wyvern poison synergy than the ability currently has. Maybe make it so that Chimera Shot has a 100% chance to crit when Wyvern Strike is on the target? :slight_smile:

Currently the rotation goes: Run in, hit Wyvern Strike, then Raptor strike until you trigger it’s cooldown (could be once, could be 5 times). Then, upon your last raptor strike (and assuming that Wyvern poison is still on the target) you run out, shoot chimera shot, auto shot, kill shot, and run back in. Upon running back in you repeat with Wyvern Strike, Raptor Strike etc.

Then, to take this rotation a step up. You run LnL rune on the head slot. Then you FD/IT or ET, do your wyvern strike/raptor strike rotation and run out, now you hit chimera shot, auto shot, chimera shot, and cast kill shot on the way back before restarting the rotation.

Here it would be great if Hunters or at least Survival hunters had the ability to cast traps in combat so that you didn’t have to wait for FD’s CD every time.

*** Minor issue noted: It takes a REALLY long time for the Survival/Wyvern build to get mana back to 100% with Viper active. At least compared to the BM build. Might be something to look into as well.

Day 3:

  • Tried expose weakness rune instead of melee specialist. This feels AWFUL. I like the extra agi, but man, raptor strike not being on-hit anymore, just feels garbage.
  • Tried running a pet and using cobra strikes instead of lone wolf rune on the chest. This feels fun as far as a rotation goes, you melee, then get out, range weave, and when your range abilities crit, you get some juicy pet crits too. But, again sadly, without BM rune, it’s just not good DPS.

The best way to define melee hunter right now: A few semi-fun playstyles that could be workable with minor tweaks, but definitely sub-par damage.

Day 4:

It seems that most players really hate the idea of having to use wing clip in their PVE rotation and I don’t blame them. It’s a PVP slow ability and that’s what it’s meant for. I’d say to Blizzard, whatever ideas you go with, whatever you decide to do, if the players end up spamming wing clip during the fight then it’s not right.

*** A good point was made to me today: a big part of the reason that Survival/2H Hunter is hard to design is because Blizzard hasn’t revamped the talent tree to fit it. If you ran BM hunter without any points in your BM tree your damage would be terrible. Same with MM hunter without any points in the MM tree. So what Blizzard is essentially trying to do, is to create an entire new Spec with runes alone and that won’t work because if you make those runes strong enough to be a spec by themselves, then they’ll get stolen by the other specs, or you have to place the runes in such a way that they contradict each other, OR (as we’re currently seeing), the spec just sucks.

When you build a spec, you start with the talent tree, then tweak/refine it with runes. Blizzard will have to revamp the Survival talent tree if there’s any chance of this working.

Day 5: There’s a post on these forums titled “Hunter Redesign Suggestions” by a fella named “Bousted”. I think his post is an excellent starting point that Blizzard could literally copy and paste and then have us test and tweak from there. The only thing still missing is that he’s not including a party buff/debuff for melee hunters, which we will need to get into raid.

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Nothing really synergizes right now. Also would love it if melee survival hunter could use expose weakness.

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A cool play on the Chimera/Wyvern Strike synergy could be: when the Hunter hits chimera on the mob while Wyvern poison is active, the Hunter AND the Hunter’s party also gets 3% crit (not stacking with LOTP) for 10 seconds.

This buffs the ability and gives Hunters a nice raid utility.

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Hunter’s Mark and Aspect of the Hawk should also grant melee attack power instead of just ranged attack power

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Agree, but put this ap buff on melee specialist rune. So it won’t go to mm spec.

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Yes, agreed. That way there’s actually a small reason to bring a melee hunter too a raid too. Our Hunters Mark can actually benefit the raid too by granting melee attack power.

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The problem is MM can also cast Hunter’s mark.

I think the buff, whatever it is, should appear as a result of the chimera shot on a target affected by Wyvern poison, last 10 seconds and apply to your whole party, but not the raid. I think the 3% crit is a good idea to take some pressure off the need to always have a feral druid. As long as they don’t stack.

This way, the range weaving would have a good effect other than damage, and the skill ceiling for the weaving hunters would be lifted because your raid members will notice your buff “uptime” etc.

Some really cool ideas here.

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All in all raptor strike 6 sec cd is just a crazy nerf to the class.
In return all the new spells we got either in a 10+ sec cd or on some rng proc……
Mongoose looks very difficult to build, to you want to have enough miss to proc the spell but risking miss raptor strikes? Unless mb dmg > raptor strike dmg which is not the case so far

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They can make hunter mark to another spell with ap buff if melee rune is equipped just as wyvren sting can be transformed to wyvren strike.

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Sure. That would work. Personally I still prefer a buff that applies to the party, not the whole raid. We don’t want to get ourselves into that, “bring one melee hunter for the raid buff” situation either. I’m not saying that a 20 man raid should have 4 Hunters… or am I??? :)))

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They already do since TSA is so important for melee dps now

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Yes, tsa is the bottom line for hunters to get a raid sport

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Yeah, TSA needs a nerf.

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I think we’re going to be using expose weakness instead of melee spec for the surv weaving build.

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I just tried that - it doesn’t really increase your DPS and with a really slow weapon feels terrible not to have your raptor strike be on-hit. I DO think it would be cool to move exposed weakness so that survival hunter can use it, but I really want to keep the melee specialist rune, even with the 2-hander.

I loved the idea mentioned on another post, that hunters need another 2H strike ability that knocks the target back 15-20 yards. Obviously raid bosses would be immune to the knock back part of it (but not the dmg part).

Then you can engage the mob, do melee dmg rotation, knock them back with the knockback strike ability, and range weave.

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Melee hunter set bonus works against pressing mongoose , and new raptor strike cd feels awful /:

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yeah i saw the talk about having a melee knockback. raid bosses being immune obviously so what if when we used it on an immune target it knocks us back instead and we use that to weave.

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Yeah, that’s perfect. If the target is immune to a knockback, it knocks us back. Otherwise, I’d be fine with both a knock back and a disengage. Just put them on the same CD.

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I was hoping for Mongoose bite as baseline, so that our rotation would be rounded out to more than 2 buttons and make it feel less RNG based. However, with the introduction of Cobra slayer, it is significantly more RNG oriented.

This has two negative effects with regards to synergy.

  1. This synergies poorly with the dmg window of Raptor Fury (RF), especially given the increased CD of Raptor Strike. Solution = increased duration of RF or create a mechanic that can increase its duration (im aware this alters the play style)

  2. Gear - You are incentivised to avoid +hit gear IOT miss more often, so that Mongoose bite will be up more often. Even the T1 2pc set bonus works against the class.

Possible solution to rotation - Cobra Slayer makes Mongoose bite baseline, on a 6 Sec CD. If Blizzard still want the spec to have an RNG feel to it, you can make Mongoose bite have a % chance to reset the CD of Raptor strike, and change Melee Specialisation to make raptor strike have a % chance to reset Mongoose Bite.

AoE abilities
Across the board are obviously being worked on and will be tuned over the next few weeks, however, as of right now, melee are currently being “forced” into using explosive shot, trap launcher and TNT IOT get close to range hunters in aoe capability. I would love to see a carve dps increase and maybe a CD reduction to be inline with other class’ aoe abilities, as well as having an opportunity to use traps.

Inline with this, improved volly dps needs improving if you want it included in ranged rotation, as ranged hunters have a significant amount of options for aoe atm that are significantly better. A possible solution to this, would be to make it similar to TBC, where it doesnt need to be channeled, in which case, its dmg can probably remain the same.

Anyways, my two cents on Melee rotation and aoe. There are a lot of great ideas above, and floating around the hunter discords. keep it up

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Yeah, it’s interesting how the issue of “RNG-based” spec has become a huge topic of discussion with the changes they made. It makes PVE more interesting because it adds randomness to the rotation, but it also limits your ability to predictably mix things up because you really do have only 2-3 abilities, compared to say, the variety of things that a rogue can do in PVP or even PVE.

This is why I thought Survival Hunter has so much potential, because between the ranged and melee abilities we could have enough of a toolkit to have a nice high skill ceiling.

But, as it stands with this first PTR iteration, unless I’m seriously missing something, it is seriously lacking.

For PVE we lack: raw DPS, and raid utility, but I will admit the ranged weaving is fun. So, keep things interesting in that regard, but the hit and run rune definitely isn’t enough.

For PVP: We lack control (without trap launcher) and mobility. I’d say at this point, give us a knock back melee strike, as well as disengage, and just put the two on the same cooldown, so that we don’t have too much.