Ever since I saw Rexxar in WC3 I wanted to play a hunter and while the majority of the theme and concept is there, a missing component of hunters is a proper melee pathway.
So here are my ideas and thoughts on how to accomplish that in SoD alongside the runes we got, without going too far from the original design of vanilla hunter.
Auto Throw : Auto Throw would work the same way as Auto Shoot except you use a throwing weapon, with the possible addition of new throwing type weapons in SoD this could be something that allows you to use ranged abilities and shots while giving the feel of a melee hunter and so you can store multiple just like arrows or bullets, a new type of hunter ammo bag could be included called a “Sheath” that will only store throwing weapons.
Mongoose Bite : Mongoose Bite is a great ability and has decent damage but it’s still restricted by the only usable after you dodge outlier, making this ability utterly and completely useless for a melee hunter in any real sense, in order to make this ability reach its potential, just simply add a rune to remove the dodge requirement and it becomes a melee hunter staple, filling the GCD while you wait for your traps and raptor strike to come up.
Aspect of the Monkey : AOTM doesn’t gain any ranks or new additions beyond Imp Monkey in the BM talent-tree, pushing its dodge chance from 8% to 13%, leaving both the talent and aspect completely unused and forgotten past level 10 when you get aspect of the hawk, I believe giving hunters a new rune with a chance to increase melee attack speed when you crit with a melee ability termed “Goin’ Ape” is a fun and cohesive idea, breathing new life into Melee Hunter and Aspect of the Monkey.
Counterattack : Counterattack by itself does enough damage, but the issue is this ability is only usable after you parry an opponent’s attack, in-order to make this ability usable while keeping the theme, I believe giving a new rune that allows successful dodges on the hunters part and unfortunate misses on the enemies end to be included alongside parries can make this ability great while not just straight up allowing it to be used off CD.
Traps : Immolation and Explosion Trap do plenty dmg by themselves and Frost Trap is great utility when paired with the Clever Traps talent, the only unfortunate aspect is that they’re unusable while in combat, i believe adding a new rune that allows the use of these traps in combat or even just adding the tbc change from patch 2.0.1 where hunters could place traps in combat with a 2 second arming time could help not just melee hunters but all hunters find use in their entire kit and gain newly added utility.
That’s all for my ideas, thank you for reading and I hope the classic wow development team considers them.