You went out of your way to try and avoid the simple facts I pointed out in some convoluted attempt to sit on the fence about if hunters would be taken or not. So let’ go this route…
World first raiding is the pinnacle of raiding, where only the best of the best comps, classes and specs will see play. Plenty of classes and/or specs are routinely left out. Can we agree?
Assuming you agree (although it would be entertaining if you didn’t and tried to argue the point), then hunters were represented in this race. The pinnacle of raiding included hunters… hardly an argument to support hunters not being able to get into raids. This isn’t even getting into the fact that any class and spec has zero issues completing AOTC and raiding at a heroic level.
Now let’s move onto mythic plus. I will specifically leave SV out of the discussion, since it’s the “meta” spec. With current keys, people pushing 25 and higher (especially 27 and higher) keys are playing at the pinnacle of mythic plus. Can we agree?
Again, assuming you agree, I’ve already shown you BM (which is considered the “worst” of the performing hunter specs in group content by the community, is completing keys up to and including 30.
Pugging is an entirely different discussion, and it most certainly isn’t a hunter only issue. There are several classes and/or specs that have difficulty pugging due to community perception. For example, feral damage has actually been above average for keys throughout most of SL, but it still has trouble pugging due to stigma. If you choose to pug, you choose to deal with these stigmas.
First of all, I do not agree with your definition of “pinnacle of M+.” This season especially, 25 keys are exceptionally accessible. I would consider 28 and above “the pinnacle of M+,” as much as I dislike that term. I’ll compromise and use +27s as an example.
I just checked raider io. There is ONE BM hunter with all 27s and above. There are only 25 or so with all +25s. His +30 is also a Junkyard, and with all due respect, a 30 Junkyard is like a 25-26 everything else.
I’m still scrolling on outlaw rogue to see what that threshold is.
Anyway, using 1 BM hunter (and props to him) to defend hunter value to M+ isn’t the best argument. It’s weird anyway since most hunters just go Surv/MM in higher M+, so it’s difficult to gauge how these numbers would look if BM didn’t have a juiced sister spec.
All other classes/specs have at least one reason beyond just damage to be taken. Hunter does not.
It’s as simple as that.
Even the worst doing X doesn’t mean that the worst isn’t disadvantaged. Consider, for instance, what an equally geared and skilled meta spec would be letting their party do.
Pugging is a very average player experience. It is the reality for a huge portion of the playerbase. Exempting it from a discussion of “How likely is X to be taken?” is disingenuous at best.
Which is a decent reason to briefly, briefly let it be overtuned—not enough to sacrifice alternate class utility for, but enough to give it some unique affordance through damage (profile)—enough for a moment, if only to shake up that stigma and level it out.
Better yet, though, one deals with the actual issue: that it does not yet have any unique affordance. Provide one, and the stigma (literally just from not having one) would reverse and, in time, disappear.
Yet those stigmas were formed by exactly the problems being discussed here. Feral provided fewer unique affordances, and at less reliability, than did its competitors; that state has been left for far longer than it should have been. That’s exactly how we end up with these issues. Why would you be okay with that for yet another class as a whole, let alone another spec.
Moreover, why pretend PuGing is an active choice? For likely a majority of those who PuG, it is merely the constraint of playing the game while working in the industry they work or while having to keep to the (lack of) schedule they live under.
The reality is that community perception matters, not only for guilds but for pugs. The video is from the point of view of Dragonflight, where almost every class is bringing some sort of buff or raid cd besides hunters and dk.
Lets say all 3 hunters spec are in the middle of the pack in terms of dps, why should a guild leader or pug invite a hunter over the other dps?
That’s some idiocy just to end up basically saying the same thing I did…
Of course most people will just play SV. Your complaint was that BM (and assume MM) can’t play at those levels. You’re blatantly wrong.
Except the other specs were played… try again maybe.
Nice straw man… the whine was that hunter couldn’t do it and therefore couldn’t play… this is a fallacy. Meta versus non-meta is a completely different discussion, and bring it up is disingenuous at best.
Well, except the overwhelming majority of the playerbase doesn’t pug at a level where class and spec matter. Maybe quit trying to move the goalpost so much and this drivel will make some sense.
This is just stupid… feral doesn’t need to be overtuned. It already does middle of the pack and higher damage when played properly.
Because it is? This is a pretty dumb argument considering you can find a guild that raids at most times.
You just noted that PuG has an outsized selection bias. That was also your literal first post.
Perhaps none of this should matter in Heroic. By all means, right-click off every raid buff accidentally given to you; you don’t need them.
But whether it should/need/ought be considered or not, it absolutely does have an impact on being taken, and offering nothing where others offer at least something is exactly how you end up with selection-affecting stigmas against a particular class or spec. They’re not insanity; though often excessive, they are simply common sense. All else being equal, you’ll take the MM over the chance of something else only if applications have trickled down to nothing / people will leave if you don’t grab enough soon.
No. The thread is about getting taken/picked/brought. Your first response was to the thread in general. I would think, therefore, it would refer to the OP/thread, no?
Your second response was to a quote specifically about being taken in PuGs. Again, not about whether they “can do it” or not (which would be literally a matter of “Hunter would single-handedly prevent the raid from clearing when having taken another class in its place would have allowed for success”).
I haven’t said that it needs to be. I said only that it would be fine to briefly let it be overtuned (something Blizzard has somehow been far more careful to thwart than for Balance, despite the other’s offering other affordances besides raw damage), if only to shake up that stigma, because even brief swings —more so than unnoticed minute tweaks— in tuning do affect community perception, and Feral has been negatively affected by its reasons for lower performance being a whole lot more eye-catching than its reasons for returned performance.
But you seem to have also skipped over the main point there:
A spec bringing only middle-of-the-pack damage, with no uniquely helpful damage profile, while bringing only absolute-bottom-of-the-pack utility is exactly what gets you bottom-of-the-pack total value and a spec or class thereby stigmatized against.
Ahh, yes, from among the robust population of UTC-10 grave shift workers.
Those who have to PuG may be a minority, but it’s not as if they are actively choosing to face outsized selection filters and a generally worse experience for the fun(?) of it.
When noting that, all else being equal, some classes offer more reason to be taken than others due to their utility… “We can’t talk about PuGing; that’s a completely different discussion,” despite this affecting PuGing only because PuG raiding is less constrained than static raiding.
When noting that a given spec is disadvantaged because it falls short in total value (affordances of damage AND utility)… “We can’t talk about the meta; that’s a completely different discussion” despite that the total value something brings is exactly what makes something meta.
It’s not as if there’s some traditional, royalistic difference between “meta” and “non-meta”; what’s “meta” is meta only because it supplies a higher ratio of reward to effort, either doing more with the same effort or managing the same with less team effort. It might as well literally just be called “typically most valuable.”
Shocking no one (else), when the value, be that by affordances from damage or utility, of a class or spec is increased enough to be competitive with “meta” specs even in the context of other meta specs, or enough to raise its synergetic specs in turn, it shakes up the “meta”.
The resultant “S-tier” or whatever BS from that shift will be irrelevant, but the fact that there would then be one fewer class/spec that offers nothing unique without being overtuned will be objectively better for the game. No class should be outright relegated to “If we can’t find anything else and already have all utility features we’d have use for, and/or if overtuned.”
Okokok.
I’d actually place that at 30 and above (it’s moreso dependent on the key itself) but I added some wiggle room. Apologies for my idiocy
Anyone can play at any level theoretically.
Also when did I make that complaint? Survival is meta. It gets brought the most (especially in organized groups) because it does a lot of damage.
The subject of the thread is why would you would bring a hunter. People bring them for damage. Halondrus is the only example of hunter “utility” (if you can consider BM being able to move while doing its rotation utility) being desirable I can think of in the recent race.
If hunters do bad damage, they get benched. If they do good damage, they get brought, unless we have crab bosses.
Why are half of these comments about the current season. Go away gooses.
To the others, yes Id like a reason to take a hunter over another class. If I was trying to make 15+ keys or heroic/mythic raids I too would take any class over a hunter if it came to picking one. I’d rather not spend hours trying to PuG into a group too.
I sometimes like to stack hunters in my keys because 1. Very biased and 2. -
There’s a gamble I’d get 3 survival hunters. Awesome! Infinite damage. There’s another gamble that I get a BM and an MM hunter. Even better. Grabs popcorn and waits to see who wins
just let hunters give everyone a watered down version of their pet spec passive and allow lw to choose an assignment for it, and have command pet give everyone the full powered aura for like 15s or something
it’s by far the easiest and least intrusive way to give hunters a form of raid utility if they’re aiming for defensive utility, (which by the looks of sentinel’s branches, they are) just tack it on to the improved pet mend and make the weakened pet aura scale per point
You doubt hunters because some basement dweller who does nothing but play this game, said something.
Srry didn’t read the post neither did I watch videos the moment I saw you’re posting a link from a streamer. As long community relies on their opinion game will never be great. People will never enjoy this game until they don’t act on their own.
Sure I read your post and if you are world first elitist then this may be a slight issue. If you’re someone who gets AoTC done and runs 15 keys you are in perfectly fine spot.
And this is my main issue. A dude who is probably a world first raider and elite players, brings his opinion which will affect many mindsets in this community.
If hunter DPS is poor they will be the worst class to take. You could take anything else and it would be more beneficial. I’d prefer not to sit for hours or get no group at all for my higher m+ and heroic runs.
I get you don’t like streamers, not that I really know the guy in the video, but I think you are more here to vent then contribute to the topic.
No I’m not trust me. Here is example. I didn’t play much of season 3 and season 4 at all. Even I have 4 set on SV hunter and decent gear, I don’t get invited in keys higher than 5. I don’t know why but it’s just the community.
And if some spec has low damage to the point where it’s more burden then dps , yea that spec it’s always blacklisted especially in pugs. I get to one extend what you’re saying, but my point was that community plays this games how streamers think is the best way. Maybe not you , but that’s why I pointed right away on video you posted. I play arcane mage, no matter how it performs, and sometimes it will be harder to get spot sometimes easier. But overall hunter brings solid group utility the other classes. It has good crowd control, ranged slow, AOe slow, etc
Hunters will always have spot and play. Just because some streamers have stupid opinion doesn’t mean it’s the correct opinion
