Hunters have been a problem for the balance team, that’s for sure. The class would need a major re-work, runes included, to make anything else than going full pet dmg with cat/ws viable for anything (pvp, pve, soloing, anything). That means if you nerf pets even more, the only pure dps class will have nothing to bring other than blessing of kings.
I get it, hunters are a low skill-floor class. You press /petattack and your enemy has to be very skillful to counter that one button press. So why not focus on utility? Making the class more versatile? Reduce pet damage but give pets utility skills. Give spiders a net, polar bears ice claw that does minimal dmg but slows, you know, utility. Or just give a reason to take any other spec/rune combo than full pet dmg.
As a hunter main, I’m okay with doing less dps than warriors and rogues, warlocks, mages, the whole lot, if I bring utility to the raid. Active utility, stuff I have to do instead of “10% all stats”.
Let’s be real, the BFD buff pet nerf is not a huge nerf. It’s something that will only be noticed by the top 1% of parsers, and WSG premade faceroll people who never die.
What it does do however, is signal to every other class that “the devs are on top of the hunter problem” even if they aren’t.
the change is minute at best and affects locks as well. the real issue is rank 3 LB which isn’t going to appear next phase.
world buffs in bgs are cringe anyway
The skill floor right now for hunter is low, but later on in the game, hunter has to control with traps and scatter for aimed shot burst windows to kill anything. Every other class is getting increased mobility and more instant casts compared to the previous iterations. Getting a 3 second aimed shot off is going to be much more difficult.
They need to find a way to transfer the large amount of damage that comes from the pet and find ways to make abilities from the hunter scale better to offset it. The hunter needs to be able to do the damage and have the pet provide more utility to make them a reasonable option over lone wolf. Stings, arcane shot and damage from traps needs to have a much better scaling formula. Chimera needs the damage nerf reverted and a lower mana cost to make it competitive. Explosive shot is too niche to be taken for much of anything other than big aoe dungeon grinding. WoD hunter had a phenomenal survival hunter vision with lock and load explosive shot, black arrow and crow.
Find a way to make hunter not so broken with passive damage and build the hunter out so that good damage can be achieved but it requires the hunter themselves to be the one making that happen.
I’ve been saying this for awhile. Everyone complains about the pet but if they are nerfed down to minimal damage, the classes existence is pointless. Hunter was always top dps in classic under level 30. What is the point of beast mastery tree if the pet is useless.
Another note is hunter may have a low skill floor but it also has the highest skill ceiling at 60, partly due to the complexity of actions and punishing nature of mistakes.
The solution cannot just be nerfs. Going forward, Every pet species needs a unique utility, the hunter needs some spinning plates to manage that reward damage increases between hunter and pet when done correctly (skill dependent actions), there needs to be manageable interactions between mobs and other players for the pet to do for support and buffs in raids, dungeons and pvp.
If non of this is done and pets are nerfed down to just eye candy, then the hunter needs to be buffed to similar damage as a warlock, having hard hitting dots, and multiple hard hitting abilities.
At 60, all the classes have a use. If you nerf the only “pure dps” class all the way down to the bottom (which is where the community will finally stop complaining, let’s be real), without providing anything in return, the dramatic call to “just delete the class” really does become relevant.