Shadowlands: Melee uptime increased yet again

Classes Hunter
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If you were wondering if MM/BM were going to be able to kite once again in the next expac, things just look grimmer with each new Alpha iteration. Not only are there going to be more snares with less/no cds, but increased melee movement speed, shadowsteps and charges for a wide range of melee, not including off-the-walls new abilities like the newly buffed DH 50 yd charge+root+shadowstep, or:

Abomination Limb (Death Knight)
Sprout an additional limb for 12 sec, dealing (45% of Attack power) Shadow damage every 2 sec to nearby enemies. If an enemy is further than 8 yds from you, they are pulled to your location.

i.e. 6 deathgrips in a row, that are automatic and so off the gcd…

What is our outdated kiting toolkit, that is insufficient for the current expansion, given to deal with these new and buffed features?

Disengage is back to its old CD (20s, still no freedom or Post-Haste baseline)
Steady Shot once again extends the duration of Conc Shot for 3s…
BM/MM get back wing clip.
MM may get Binding Shot standard.
Revive pet is getting a… nerf? So if your pet dies you will be stuck standing still for 6s and an easy kill?

The buffs were all useful durations and abilities back when melee had a fraction of the mobility they have now. Some of them are even still nerfed compared to their original iterations. Why can we not see, if not an actually useful kiting new class covenant ability, then at least a wider unpruning/unnerfing, with tuning to happen later if we really do manage to somehow become too effective at kiting?
Why not simply return the following functionality at the barest of minimums?
Master’s Call standard.
Post Haste as a glyph (or standard).
Tar trap radius large enough to be useful for kiting again.
Traps invisible again.
Trap trigger radius once more larger than melee range.
Pet Disarm returned (via an honor talent if needed).
Aimed shot once more castable while moving (in PVP at least…)
Pet snare’s back to 100% uptime, with range increased to what spider’s used to be (25 yd).

Of all of these I think the 100% uptime pet snare was always the most obnoxious, but given, not only the current state of melee uptime, but the increase we are headed for in 6 months time, I still dont think it would be enough. To be honest I think it would take Master’s Call getting 2 charges, but even then, if BM gets nerfed in PVP to the level its currently at and MM doesnt get AiS while moving then even that wouldnt make either spec half as effective a kiter as they used to be.

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I feel for you, I sadly haven’t played my hunter in pvp since the end of MoP, but i will say as a warrior / DK main going into shadow lands, I’ll be on the opposite end abusing my movement abilities. Good luck friend, see you on the battlefield.

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I don’t understand the hard on the devs have had for melee mobility/stickiness since legion (minus ret for some reason).

In old melee vs ranged matchups assuming equal skill the ranged class could keep the melee away for the majority of the fight. However when the melee finally had an opportunity to get a hit in they would deal massive damage. Skilled melee vs unskilled ranged could still dominate and vice versa. This was balanced.

Now it’s the complete opposite. Melee can easily be on their target for the majority of the fight thanks to low CD mobility, multiple different mobility spells, and passive/spammable (sometimes ranged) slows. Skill doesn’t matter if your class does not have the buttons it needs. Ranged classes besides mages simply have no way to counter this.

The mobility imbalance is something I was hoping they’d look at in SL but I don’t think it has gotten enough attention.

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Back then ranged needed to actually have range to attack they no longer have that restricted

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The minimum range which only existed for hunters was gone in cata. That leaves three expansions where hunters could still kite proficiently and deal damage to attackers in melee range. Not to mention every other ranged class which never had a minimum range were still able to kite.

Also, just because there’s no minimum range doesn’t mean trying to cast or deal damage in general when a melee is in your face is easy. They can now CC, interrupt, or simply run through your character model to cancel casts. Used to be much less of an issue when we could create some distance. Every caster + MM hunter is designed to turret in order to deal damage which is anti-kiting and anti-PvP.

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Actually, it was MoP when the minimum range was removed.

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TRUE

Still not a valid reason to destroy kiting.

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If you can’t kite a DK as a hunter, even with a specific covenant ability that isn’t likely to get picked, you have a lot of issues that you should address.

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You’re on crack if you think every PvP-focused DK player won’t pick that ability. It’s the only one useful for something other than damage.

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If you can’t kite a DK as a hunter, even with that ability, you just need to get better.

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I’d agree if this was any pre-legion expac but if you still think that, you’re stuck in the past. Compare abilities & counters

AMS counters freezing trap and binding shot, death’s advance counters explosive trap/bursting shot and snares, 70% spammable snare>50% snare. Trinket can be saved specifically for scatter/intim since they can just AMS our only other CC. After that they can wrath walk for free and it’s over from there.

From MoP to today hunter lost many kiting tools, what gap closing tools did DKs lose? I know they gained delirium, deathchill, and wraith walk. Changing all their runes to death runes means they can spend more of them on chains of ice.

Sure we have a 4 sec freedom every 45 sec and a cleanse every 20 sec but their spammable ranged snare already covers that. In MoP we had a glyph to make master’s call last 8 sec instead of 4 which was basically required vs DKs, but we don’t have it anymore.

For BM specifically they can death strike our pet for free sustain. For MM at least it’s possible to stay at 60+ yards with sniper shot, but sniper shot has downtime and the cast time from both sniper shot and aimed shot gives them an opportunity to close the gap. You also cannot stop wraith walk from that far away.

tl;dr if the DK has all their buttons bound it’s not gonna happen.

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If the hunter isn’t a potato he can kite a DK. Case in point, you’re terribad if you’re letting your pet sit on a DK and allowing him to death strike it.

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I stated that specifically for BM since the only way they’re dealing damage is if their pet is attacking. If the DK is getting kited it’s the DK who is bad, not the other way around. They have plenty of abilities that completely nullify our kit. The only thing they’re missing is a purge for master’s call.

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AMS isn’t reactionary… you talk as if it’s some mythical skill that negates everything in your toolkit. If the DK predicts when the potato hunter is going to use certain abilities, then sure. That said, you have plenty of ways to outdistance a DK as a hunter.

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It’s not just AMS, I listed almost every counter DK has for hunter already. Saying it isn’t reactionary is kind’ve wrong though. If you aren’t in melee range with the hunter you can react to a trap being thrown. If you ARE in melee range, may as well AMS anyways since it counters three of their gap creating abilities, free 5 seconds of uptime. Not like getting trapped is a big deal since it will be on DR from scatter. I’ll test if you can AMS the binding shot root even after it’s attached, because that would make it reactable.

edit: just tested it, you can walk out of binding shot with AMS after it’s put down lmao

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Good thing the DK can just perma AMS through all of that…oh wait.

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You gotta be trolling at this point. The point is it’s the DK’s burden to use AMS intelligently to nullify at least one of our CC and there’s nothing the hunter can do about it. Talk about death’s advance. Or wraith walk. Or chains. Or delirium. Or deathchill. You’re boring and I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

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If you don’t know how to kite a dk, I recommend going to skillcapped or something. It isn’t hard unless you’re constantly trying to 1v1 the dk, at which point you should be asking why you’re 1v1’ing a dk.

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What other situation could we possibly be talking about other than a 1v1 when the topic is A hunter kiting A death knight?

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If only hunters had longer range…