It seems to me that all of the fundamental problems with the Hunter boil down to one core issue; lack of a clear, cohesive identity. We’re building a castle on sand and what we need is a new foundation. I can already see the problem getting worse with our Hero Talents announcement, which was very underwhelming, and so this is my feedback and I’m hoping this will get MORE discussion going around how the Hunter can be reworked in a way that suits all of it’s many potential playstyles/themes.
Fundamental Changes
- Weapon and certain Pet restrictions should be removed completely for all Hunters. Let me say that again for the people in the back.
Currently, you can’t be a petless Survival Hunter. You can’t be a melee Beast Master. You can’t be a hybrid ranged/melee. You can’t be a melee Hunter with Exotic Pets. Traps, demolitions, tinker/engineer abilities, aspects/nature magic, tracking/stalking… these are all cool class fantasy related concepts, but they’re all very limited and thus relegated to niche utility purposes. The Hunter is a class of so much unrealized thematic and gameplay potential.
Why? Let me choose how to build my character. Let me play my class.
So my main suggestion, if nothing else, is to let the Hunter be a hybrid ranged/melee class as a baseline once again. It’s time to come home.
The following should be completely baseline for all Hunters. - These are the two fundamental changes that must take place for this to class to have an identity that remains clear enough to scream Hunter, but customizable enough to facilitate a wide variety of class fantasy options and launch ourselves into the future.
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Lone Wolf - Pure and simple, every Hunter should have the ability to go petless. Anyone who plays a Hunter knows sometimes you just don’t want to fuss with the pet. You may be sick of the bad ai or annoyed with it cluttering up the screen. Or maybe you just want to play a petless melee ranger archetype for fun. Many reasons to want a break from having a pet, it’s one simple change that instantly brings multiple theme/gameplay options online. Quick note: Petless BM? Yes, think more guardians but no active pet, basically.
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Weapon Options - Spear, 2handed blades, dual axes, swords, daggers, scythe, bow, gun, staff, etc. Every Hunter should be able to wield a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, AND/OR both. Think of any lore character or class fantasy related to the Hunter. Rexxar, Sylvanas, Lor’Themar, Dwarven Riflemen, Headhunters, Legolas, Stryder, Rambo. They can always do both. Why isn’t the Hunter simply considered a hybrid ranged/melee as a baseline? The class can already be both melee or ranged, it doesn’t make sense that you would choose one spec and suddenly forget how to hold a sword or another and forget about your bow/gun.
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Lastly, I’d revive the concept of Weapon/Ability Swapping based on range. This is the new core mechanic of the Hunter and what makes it a true ranged/melee hybrid. Let what makes Hunters interesting be the hybrid nature itself and it’s abilitity to move around a battlefield as needed. In Vanilla, a Hunter could seamlessly move between melee and range and their character would automatically swap between their melee weapons and their ranged as needed. Bring this back. Half of our abilities can already interchangeably swap between a ranged version and a melee even now, so just take the core fundamentals and let them auto swap on the fly based on the Hunter’s range from it’s opponent. Just to be clear, this is a mostly cosmetic change. It really shouldn’t be that difficult, and it would do so much heavy lifting to give the Hunter a more clear identity and playstyle.
For Example (Melee - Ranged) (Wing clip - Concussive Shot) (Raptor Strike - Arcane Shot) (Butchery - Multi-shot)
I realize this is going to ruffle some feathers, but this is the key to understanding the Hunter. Even though Vanilla design is dated in many ways and had problems, it was on to something. I’m definitely NOT asking for unfun stuff like a “dead zone”, just to be clear. If you want to move away from class design that pidgeon holes the player into themes/playstyles that all lead to a dead end and always falls short of fulfilling any real class fantasy, these are the solutions.
- Completely restructure the Hunter Talent Trees.
Ok, with that core mechanical change in mind, obviously there would need to be a different approach to what Hunter talents even are. A question we should have answered ages ago is “what makes each of our talent trees unique/interesting”, because no one seems to have any idea. The reason we can’t answer that question is because each of our talent trees is flawed from the beginning. One thing is for sure, the talent structure of Hunter Baseline (Pet/Ranged), Survival (Melee/Pet), Beast Mastery (Ranged/Pet), and Marksman (Pure Ranged) is holding this class back. It’s all mixed and matched in all the wrong ways, so it should come as no surprise when we end up with a muddled, confusing design that has bad restrictions all over the place.
A better structure would be Hunter Baseline (Melee and Ranged Talents), then Beast Mastery (Single Pet Buffs or Pet Army), Survival (Self Buffs, Nature Magic, Traps, Poisons), and Deadeye (Explosives/Mortar, Throwing Weapons, Ranged Attacks).
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Hunter Base Talent Tree - The current tree is basically divided into pet centric talents and ranged centric talents, with some utility thrown in. My suggestion is to alter this tree so that it’s divided between melee centric talents and ranged centric talents instead, with some utility and a few basic pet things thrown in, if needed. Remember, the foundation we’re building on here is that the Hunter is a ranged/melee hybrid first, and a utility/beast lord/trapper/naturalist second. So go with that. Also note, I’m NOT suggesting that a Hunter who favors melee talents in the base tree should give up wielding a ranged weapon, or vice versa. But imagine one side of the base starting with Raptor Strike and ending with Fury of the Eagle, while the ranged side starts with Kill or Aimed Shot and ends with maybe Wailing Arrow.
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Beast Mastery - The Beast Mastery tree wouldn’t need much change at all. Pets are obviously a huge part of the Hunter class fantasy, and there should be a tree dedicated entirely to them. The current tree lets you build towards having one beefy pet or a bunch of fairly strong ones. This is a good tree and it’s no surprise that it’s such a popular spec right now. You could take Kill Command as well as other strong pet centric talents and move them here.
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Survival - Ok, so what would Survival become if it’s no longer the melee tree, since we’ve already established that melee would be baseline talent accessible. I’m not gonna lie, the current Survival tree is kinda boring and includes a lot of redundancy so once you take the good melee talents and move them to the base tree, there’s not much left that’s salvageable. I would fill in the Survival tree with talents that place an emphasis on self buffs, nature magic, stealth/poisons, and personal defense. So, basically, Aspects, Camouflage, Serpent Sting, etc . These could provide a lot of group utility as well as enhancing the Hunter’s strength themselves rather than buffing a pet. Again, I want both ranged and melee as well as pet and petless to be valid options, so this is no longer the “melee” tree, and thus the talents here would have to benefit both playstyles. My ideas for totally fresh concepts that could be introduced for the Hunter would be nature magic abilities, and maybe stealth/mobility stuff like harpoon/camo.
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Deadeye (Renamed Marksman) - Like the Survival tree, I would gut Marksman talents, taking only the good stuff and moving it over to the baseline tree. Again, I think the ranged talents should be baseline accessible, just like the good melee stuff. So what would take the place of the entire Marksman tree? I would fill in this tree with any talents even loosely related to being a Marksman, or better yet, a Deadeye. Imagine three talent lines here, one dedicated to traps/explosives/mortar style attacks, one to throwing weapons a la Deadly Chakram, axes knives and spears, and sure, a line dedicated to some more ranged attacks, maybe Barrage and Explosive Shot.
- The Return of Class Identity
With the basic system I just laid out, we could have petless hunters for both melee and ranged oriented players, melee or ranged is now available to all specs, and essentially any Hunter related class theme/fantasy you can imagine has been unlocked. With regards to theme, any blank spots left could be filled in with Glyphs. But why stop there? I think the Hero Talents options are also too limited in scope, so I’ve got a few ideas for that too.
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Valewalker - Survival/Beast Mastery - The Valewalker doubles down on self buffs and nature magic, able to buff their own melee/ranged combat prowess but also that of their pets/allies as well. They hone their nature magic wielding abilities to strike out at all who would seek to disrupt the natural cycle of life.
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Pack Leader - Available to Beast Mastery and Deadeye (Marksman) Hunters. I think Pack Leader is a solid choice for one Hero Talent path. Pets are still a huge part of the Hunter identity, even if there is a subset of players who prefer petless melee playstyles. Pack Leader would, of course, be for people who want to place more emphasis on pet stuff, maybe here you would unlock Animal Companion, for example.
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Ranger - Available to Survival and Deadeye (Marksman) Hunters. Finally, the Ranger. Stryder. The truly grounded master of the bow and the sword, tracking, and trapping.
This concludes my Hunter redesign talk, thank you for joining. Please, if you’re one of the players who is concerned about the direction the Hunter is going in, now is the time to get some discussion going. We have to talk about this until Blizzard can’t ignore it any longer. Now, for the sake of even more food for thought, I want to get into some easy quick fixes that bear repeating.
Quick Fixes
The following are some changes that would instantly make the Hunter better for everyone without requiring any earthshattering redesigns.
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Trueshot - A passive aura that you can activate for a Bloodlust/Heroism. Auras are a Warcraft staple, they add class flavor, group utility. Trueshot should not only provide a passive raid wide buff, it should also be activateable as a Bloodlust/Heroism. Simple concept really, if Hunters are going to have Hero/BL it should be easily accessible to all specs and certainly not through a pet ability of only a specific family. Maybe some would disagree, but I don’t think it feels good as a MM cooldown, so my hope it would be removed from their rotation, made baseline, and then replaced with something cooler and better for MM. This also eliminates one more keybind, which we’re desperate to do in this game, so we’re basically killing about 4 birds with one stone with this change.
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Exotic Beasts - Just make Exotic Beasts available for all Hunters, at least the cosmetic side of it. I’m not asking for Animal Companion, and I’m not saying Beast Masters should have their special flavor abilities taken away, but this one in particular feels SO bad considering you will inevitably want to use your favorite pet with a non-BM spec. In my brave new world of warcraft, Beast Masters would be compensated for this by having access to special pet abilities… you know, something that makes sense for just Beast Masters to have, but doesn’t make playing other specs with a pet feel horrible.
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Hunters Mark - I hate that this is our “raid buff”. I hate this ability in general. I’d trade this for a fort/mark style 1 hr buff or a devotion style aura in a heart beat. It’s annoying to have to remember to cast it all of the time, it doesn’t feel good to use at all. The fact that it’s only good above the boss being 80% HP is also not great, now you just spend the remaining 80% thinking about how that ability is doing nothing anymore. Tbh, Hunter’s Mark never felt good, it was always a nuisance. When I really just want to begin attacking my target, I can’t because I first have to “mark” it… every… time?
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Stampede, Dire Beasts - It’s not that I want to take away anyone’s Beast Master fantasy, but I definitely like it’s time to reconsider the proliferation of pets/guardians that we have in this game. It’s out of control. Please make it so these things are, at the very least non-targetable, only animations for the sake of flavor. The zookeeper meme has to die.
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Flanking Strike, Coordinated Assault, and Spearhead - I get that they all have slightly different effects, but am I crazy? Three abilities that are all more or less just “you and your pet charge the target”? Seems redundant and boring.
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X Shot - Too many abilities on the ranged side of the Hunter are just basic targeted shots with various effects. I get it, how many ways can you shoot a target? But the result is they all feel pretty same-y. The Hunter has too many X Shots and half of them are just doing the same things. Some of these could be reduced/combined into one shot or, in some cases, just deleted.
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Aimed Shot - I would just change this into an instant skill shot, seriously. Make it fire like Arcane Orb.
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Kill Command - First off, “Kill” Command is not killing anything, ever. It’s the most wet noodle attack in our whole arsenal. Tbh this one isn’t too bad, but I don’t think pressing a button to make my pet attack feels great. I just don’t “feel” the impact or the damage. Abilities like Bestial Wrath feel a lot better as you’re buffing your pet… you’re doing something. Maybe personal taste here but I think the Beast Master as a playstyle feels better when I’m simply buffing my pet and then doing my own thing as opposed to “commanding” it all the time, especially with a main rotational ability.
That’s it… for now.
