Melee hunter

It reminds me of Jousting, but it ain’t.

Melee weaving in PVE is a substantial dps increase if you do it. Even moreso on horde where you can double dip on the WF proc chance with Wing Clip. If you do it between two autoshots while Aimed+Multi are on CD, you slightly delay the next autoshot at worst while gaining free DPS.

You don’t “wait for a full auto attack swing”. You walk in, hit the boss once you’re in melee range and then run back out. One of the main theorycrafters on the hunter discord is planning to make a melee weaving guide eventually, I’d suggest to check it out whenever it comes out.

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It’s literally free damage if you do it right, that’s the thing. When you’re not clipping auto shot, it has a cooldown based on your bow/xbow/gun speed… and you usually want very slow. You also have a longish cooldown on Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot. So when all three are cooling down, you can move into your melee zone and get a quick Raptor Strike off, then run back out. If you have a swing timer it isn’t hard to do this regularly, assuming no boss mechanic punishes this.

Obviously during times you have Rapid Fire up or IAotH procs, you won’t be moving in, but there is still downtime. You at times wait for your auto shot to go off before using Multi or Aimed specifically because you don’t want to clip it.

Using a slow 2h (Arcanite Reaper or Ashkandi) makes Raptor Strike hit hard, and if you have the points for it, with a high crit chance.

As was said above, as Horde it’s even better with WF. Done right it doesn’t clip into any of your major three ability cooldowns and is just bonus damage on top. Hunters were falling behind in AQ40, and weaving lets you keep up to some degree… and again - it’s free damage.

EDIT: I just read Boomsky’s name, we’re both in the same Discord. Sixx is an amazing Hunter and theorycrafter and has done a lot of testing on it. You don’t wait on a swing timer either, as the moment you enter melee you will swing.

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The hunter in the classic era most specifically vanilla and TBC is a ranged melee hybrid really, especially the survival tree. You can say that you want to focus on melee but don’t forget your various ranged moves like serpent sting, and such. Master the range melee dance and you will do well.

Lmao king Bepples the ranged SV white Knight has appeared.

He’s just stuck in the past. Doesn’t like that I love melee SV and am glad ranged SV is gone.

Liking melee as a Hunter is blasphemy! The horror!

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Survival was at its best in PvE when it was ranged. It’s been hit or miss for a long time, but a number of times it was the best PvE spec. It’s… not as melee. It’s nice that it’s unique now that it’s melee… sort of… but it isn’t actually unique.

In vanilla, Survival was a terrible tree. It had some good PvP talents but that was it - outside of going deep Survival for the free hit, you didn’t really invest heavily into it and as soon as you had the hit you dropped it in favour of higher pet DPS in the BM tree. At no point did you drop TSA for anything else. Lightning Reflexes is a theoretical DPS increase but it takes so many different things coming together to be one.

Meleeing as a Hunter is literally only feasible in vanilla when you need to Wing Clip something, when you’re the Nightfall swinger, or when you’re weaving in a Raptor Strike for DPS. You don’t abandon your bow.

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Good thing this is the Classic forums.

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Correct, because the hunter in vanilla is a range melee hybrid.

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I mean… not entirely. There are melee-only abilities specifically for when you’re forced into melee, or if you’re abusing the fact auto shot and auto attack have different timers for max DPS. You mostly utilize your melee only attacks to get out of melee. There were some designs in vanilla for potentially making Survival a melee oriented tree, but obviously that didn’t pan out at all.

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Like I said: I have never seen a qualitative assessment of how much damage you earn and your posts are no different. While it’s short, running in to do that takes time and Auto Shot’s swing timer will only be 3-4 seconds. Furthermore, this will limit your choice of melee weapon, make you vulnerable to a bunch of melee mechanics, and add an extra mana sink to the rotation.

Because if it does the same damage it means that in order for it to be NOT worth, you would have to do more than 1 auto clipping into the next.

Say you auto every 3 sec. They do the same damage. If you hit auto, run in, raptor, run out and auto in 6 sec ( perfect) you will do say 3k damage if they both hit for 1k.

Now, if you were to auto, run in, stand there for
1 sec, then run back out 3 sec total, (takes 1 sec to run in, 1 sec to run out) you’d hit for 2k over 6 sec.

If you don’t run in at all, and do 2 autos, you’d do 2k damage over 6 sec.

And for fun, let’s say you have quick shots up, so 3 sec speed is now 2.3 sec. Should you still weave? 4.6 sec is now the window, since it takes 1 sec to run in and 1 sec to run out, you’d add about 0.2 sec to the timing. So basically you clip an auto by .2 sec. So now you do 3k damage over 4.8 sec, vs 2k over 4.6 sec.

You tell me, is weaving worth it?

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Yes it is viable against melee, you could still damage range badly seeing how your relying on your pet.

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3-4 seconds is more than enough time to get into melee and then out. Give the man time to get testing done, you can’t test at 60 yet and private servers are taken with a grain of salt.

Someone posted a video of a hunter using thunderfury to melee in pvp. I can promise you that the one or two Thunderfurys your guild comes across while raiding will go to the tanks and then the fury warriors and then the rogues in that order.

Survival in BFA is a ton of fun, and the change to a melee spec is what made me want to play a hunter in the first place.

As far as vanilla is concerned, I’ll tell you what i told my girlfriend in Wrath: If you want all the coolest weapons, play a hunter. If you actually want to swing those weapons, play a warrior.

Full T3 with TF yet they were only decently beating the people they were against.
In reality, had they been specced MM and had a bow / gun equipped they probably would have one shot the same people with Aimed Shot.

It’s just forcing a bad spec to work by overgearing it, ignoring that with the same gear and a viable build you would perform vastly better.

It works if you play alliance.

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Just let me melee bro.

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Here is the thing.

People will tell you something isnt viable. But that’s not what vanilla/classic was about.

It was about having fun. Play what you want. Do what you want.

LOL yeah, do what you want, so long as you don’t ever want to raid or be accepted into any PvP or dungeon groups. :roll_eyes:

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You clearly never played vanilla. Survival hunter tanks were common.