I’ll start off by saying that while we have zero idea what is coming in the next few phases and that may have a material impact on the problem, I think the root cause of the problem with Hunter balance in Phase 2 is becoming more and more evident.
The major problem revolves around rune placement among rune slots. There are way too many contrasting playstyle defining runes scattered in unintuitive ways. To expand, a current major problem is ranged hunter performance. It is driving undesirable meta shifts such as hunters playing exclusively melee leading to Gnomer spam including “LFX DPS, RANGED ONLY!” to handle some pug-difficult mechanics and is now creating alternatives such as “Spell Hunter” where we’re throwing all our relatively uncontested mail gear to the side and contesting the most difficult set to obtain in Gnomer (the one that doesn’t come from tokens).
So why is balancing ranged hunter so difficult? Why doesn’t Blizzard just fix it? The overlap in (what I consider) the three major types of Hunter play (ignoring this new spell abomination) in SOD P2 make it challenging. We have melee hunter, which is now utilizing BM and pets to maximize it’s PVE damage. We have MM, which isn’t optimal in PVE but can dish some insane PVP burst and typically would utilize Lone Wolf. We have historical physical damage ranged, which also specs heavy into the BM tree because of how strong pets are. The “traditional” ranged physical hunter sicks their pet on the boss, auto shoots with cooldowns, and spams Multishot and Arcane Shot and keeps Serpent Sting up. The most meaningful toggle for this spec is the pet, but since melee hunters are also using the pet, that lever doesn’t make sense to pull. Increasing baseline abilities substantially would probably put too much incremental power in MM or have other adverse affects. You could try to push something like Chim Shot or Explosive Shot to be strong enough to overcome the PVE opportunity cost of giving up Beast Mastery on gloves, but that would require a substantial buff and would send MM into the stratosphere as far as glass cannon PVP goes. If you thought burst in PVP was bad, wait until you see burst in PVP from a MM hunter that has a Chim Shot strong enough to push PVE hunters into giving up the opportunity cost of Beast Mastery. Was that sentence a bit confusing? It is. It absolutely is. Hunter balance has become a real case of three spidermen pointing at each other.
So what should Blizzard look into? How about unbundling the mess of runes a bit. Why do runes of conflicting playstyles get spread around different slots? Why does a hunter have to choose between GCD filling ranged shots and passive pet damage? Why can’t we have both of those? This most recent buff to Chim shot won’t benefit typical ranged hunters because it’s not enough to throw away Beast Mastery rune, or not meaningfully, anyway. Put “role defining” runes in the same slots like hybrid class runes are. Put Dual Wield Specialization and Chim/Explosive shot in the same slot, so that we are deliberately choosing between those two playstyles. Put Beast Mastery and Lone Wolf in the same slot, again, so we’re deliberately choosing between two playstyles. Put Lion in some support slot that doesn’t have role-defining runes in it (such as how it currently limits the ability to select Lone Wolf because of bringing a necessary raid buff). Make these rune choices deliberate and matter and stop perpetuating the Frankenstein’s Monster version of current hunter rune choices. Once this is accomplished, balancing decisions become more deliberate. If ranged hunters are using pets and chim shot and melee are using pets and dual wield… you can actually buff ranged (improving chim shot) without also buffing melee hunters by buffing pets. It’s a novel idea, but it would get rid of the three spidermen pointing at each other and cause Blizzard’s balancing attempts to stop looking like the sweaty guy choosing between two red buttons.
Align your balancing levers. Make the runes make sense. Make it so there are deliberate “choice” rune slots to assign your playstyle and let those runes act as your balancing tools. Buffing Chim Shot a little when traditional ranged hunters aren’t using it and it’s not enough to cause us to skip Beast Mastery runes for optimal damage output is just not it. Fix the root cause (rune alignment/playstyle choice) and go from there.
The real issue is that ranged hunter runes are extraordinarily bad compared to other classes.
Let’s look at Sniper Training, it gives a 10% crit buff to hunter shots but only if you haven’t moved for 6 seconds. This rune relies on minimal mechanics and doesn’t even increase autoshot crit.
Compare that to a Mage’s burnout rune that just straight gives 15% crit with the only penalty being that crits cost 1% more mana.
Now, let’s compare trap launcher to Deadly Brew. Deadly Brew lets rogues use other weapon buffs, but crucially it applies a DOT when poison procs and adds AP scaling.
Trap launcher lets you use traps in combat, but does not add scaling. This means your trap, which competes with other abilities for your GCD, does like 20 single target DPS.
How is it acceptable that ranged hunter runes are so clearly inferior to other classes runes that perform similar functions?
magic ammo rune!
have it not require an ammo bag/quiver slot - unlimited ammo that scales up as you level. So if you are level 40, its 40dps ammo/arrow
this would boost ranged hunters and not give any side power to melee hunters
if that 1dps per level is too op, even half a dps would be a huge boon in power for RANGED 20dps magical ammo is $$$
This is intentional. We’re being pidgeon holed into BM by the development team because the community at large cannot stand when the other hunter specs are viable. If MM did within 10% of the damage a warrior did everyone on reddit/twitter/forums would lose their minds. Even when we have a build which utilizes lone wolf, people cry for nerfs.
BM is the only safe spec they can push. It leaves the hunter themselves incredibly weak and unable to kill anyone unless they have beastial wrath up in the current meta. This is why all the good runes are passives. This is why all the active runes are bad. This is why there is only 1 viable pet option. This is why they have not supported scaling for any of the old hunter abilities.
Same reason as above. The scaling is what it is to prevent ranged hunter from being effective due to community outrage. They’re okay with mages having 60% crit at 60 and one shotting people, there’s almost no one complaining about arcane surge. They’re not okay with a hunter having 15% crit and doing more than 400 damage on a 3 second cast with a 10 second cooldown and a deadzone.
Hunter will never be good because the community refuses to allow it to be.
Wrong. Anyone that has spent anytime playing any version of this game knows that the “Hunter Balancing Conundrum” is that hunters whine and cry like small children unless they are broken and OP. The only time in SoD hunters did not emit a constant stream of these salty tears were P1 when hunter pets were literally broken with bugs and destroying players. When that bug got fixed hunters began cry with accusations that the devs hated them.
Then P2 came and melee hunter had an insanely overpowered 1 or 2 button rotation that top meters. Peak hunter happiness. True balance in the eyes of the hunter. 1 button top dps rotation = hunter balance. Noobs on the forums pointed out how stupid and OP it was. Then it got nerfed. Hunter crying ensued bc hunters could not press 1 button to top meters.
even here we see the hunter mindset. the devs hate hunters. there is a conspiracy amongst blizz staff to hold them back. everyone hates hunters. hunters NEED to be #1 on the meters. not only #1 on the meters but should be able to be #1 and effortlessly kill all pvp targets with min 1 or 2 buttons or maybe just sending their pet after the target.
That pretty much summarizes the Hunter Balance Conundrum. Hunter tears unless they are not 1 shotting or top dps with 1 button.
Could ranged hunter use some improvement? yes.
Is ranged completely broken? no.
will it get that improvement in the near future? yes.
Will hunter stop crying unless they are top dps and absurdly broken? no.
I don’t think cherry picking good runes and comparing them to bad runes is the solution. Is Chimaera shot a bad rune if it was accessible to BM Ranged hunters? Having an actual GCD ability to throw in to a class that is nowhere near GCD locked? That would be a significant improvement. Some classes have plenty of buttons to press and need their passive runes to supplement their active abilities. Other classes have crap all for active abilities and need more buttons to press. BM Ranged hunter needs buttons to press.
The problem is that trap launcher is so bad that it isn’t used unless the GCD won’t impact any other ability. Have 1.2s left until you can chimera? TL is so bad that putting Chimera on CD for a third of a second is a DPS loss.
Hunter’s aren’t any of those things. Not number one in the dps meters. Incredibly slow time to kill on targets in pvp. The least utility of any class. Hunters have more downsides and restrictions on abilities than any other class in the game.
That’s an awfully nice strawman you have there. Especially when you skip over the part where I specifically mention scaling the unusable abilities hunters have which would result in the opposite of what you’re suggesting I want.