I thought this was a well written article. And I especially agree how losing Wild Spirits significantly hurt our damage profile, especially in mythic dungeons.
The article didn’t mention much about our defensives, which I feel also need some help.
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Agree with most of that, but I do NOT want Wild Spirits back.
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I don’t necessarily miss the aoe circle of wild spirits, but I 100% miss the functionality of a 2 min high burst cd.
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We don’t need while spirits per say, it could be an addon ability. For example:
For MM: When you cast Volley, wild spirits its applied to the volley area.
For BM: When you casts stampede, wild spirits is applied to a 15 yard radius.
Would that be any better? No additional ground targeting and we still get something better than death chakram.
Honestly our lack of burst is not a major issue for me. Yeah in situations where stuff dies fast it’s annoying, but in M+ at the 21 level I rarely feel like something’s missing. I actually really enjoy doing good, consistent damage all the time no matter the situation. That being said, AotW should absolutely be turned back into what it used to be. No idea what Blizzard was smoking when they redesigned it.
To me, what’s holding us back the most are our high-CD defensives, lack of utility, and lack of a group buff. I think those need to be addressed before burst. Our overall DPS could also use a bump across the board.
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The article outlines the core issue very well. That is, Hunter has a bunch of utility that could be useful, perhaps used to be, but no longer is.
For example misdirection was good a decade ago when threat mattered, and then again more recently on Skittish weeks, but now it’s pointless.
Having a pet to off tank could ne massive…if M+ had any reason for an off tank.
Another way to think about this is Shroud/invis skips. This was super needed in BfA dungeons, but in the more recent linear dungeons it’s not as useful. The skill didn’t change, but the content did. Hard CC like poly and trap are in the same boat. Without mobs that need long CC they are not useful.
So either update the Hunter utility, or redesign the content so it has value.
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The worst part about all of this is that blizzard keeps ignoring the massive problems that the hunter class in general. We are a class that unless we are top of the DPS meters, we are nothing. We have allegedly the worst survivability in the game, ironic when one of our spec is called Survival (lol). After Shadowlands, we lost some of our best abilities and defensives. To finish; is hard to ignore the abomination that is our talents trees. just in the general talent we have 16 two nods talents, like wtf is that (btw I’m counting the 2 serpent sting and 2 sentinel owls talents). we all these out of the way, do not worry guys Blizz plans to rework Rogue next :D.
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Serious question: Do we know if Blizz still has an actual hunter dev? Could they have left the company at some point and never been replaced?
MD is not useless, it absolutely can help with threat on M+ trash - especially with tank classes that don’t have a lot of snap AoE threat.
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Fully agree on MD. It can for sure make things easier for the group, even if they don’t notice it.
But even if its undersold, it’s not exactly necessary, so I fully agree that the lack of survivability and utility is holding hunters back. As per the article, we live or die on our DPS contribution.
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Because it isn’t really an issue for hunter anymore, they addressed it coming into DF and even gave us more in 10.0.5 with the extra hp on rejuv wind talent in the class tree.
Not true tho so idk who alleged it but they are trolling.
It is on bm as pet aggro doesn’t count.
The core issue is 100% utility which is what the article was about and is the biggest thing holding hunter back. Blizzard either needs to give hunter unique valuable utility or tune as around not having it. As we can see currently we have neither and the entire class is suffering as a result.
Im not sure if they have a developer actively working on Hunters, but whether they do or no is hard to deny the many issues this class has. On the other hand, what are you saying about our defenses ben good, Hunters have no passive mitigation, almost non-existence survivability. Removing the defensive aspect of hunter’s Mark and feign death was a big kick in the nuts. Turtle is good but not great, it hinders our ability to attack which is the main focus of this class. Fortitude of the bear is great but means that we have to sacrifice Primal Rage/ Predator’s Thirst. Survival of the fittest is amazing but 3 MIN gtfo cmon.
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We have one of the highest hp pools of any dps class when they added max % hp to rejuv winds. Turtle is an immunity which is a fantastic defensive tool. Exhil ends up being around a 1m cd thanks to natural mending. SOTF cd is long but its a 40% dr which is great. Bear is a personal rallying cry and while it can suck in m+ when you have to give it up for lust pet swapping exists and in raid you never have to worry about being the luster. Hunter definitely has issues currently but our defensive package isn’t one of them.
Hunter has proactive defensives rather than reactive for the most part so a lot of hunters who claim the class to be squishy are actually just not playing well.
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To say that we are not squishy and that “we Hunter definitely has issues currently but our defensive package isn’t one of them” is mindblowing.
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tbh people thinking hunter is still super squishy is mindblowing to me but then I see how some people use their defensives and it makes sense I guess.
Curious as to exactly which classes/specs you think are squishier…I can’t fathom the list is all that long…
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Its hard to quantify as I’d say the middle area has a lot of classes that are similar and then the outliers on both ends for example shaman is down bad currently and aug is busted. So somewhere in the middle is where I’d put hunter.
Soooo how exactly are you defining “squishy” then? Because in the context of “having an ability to help you survive every time the boss does the thing where they majorly chunk your health bar,” then a hunter can reasonably rotate CDs, provided the fight doesn’t go on too long or the damage event isn’t too frequent.
However if we’re talking about the ability to stay alive pull-to-pull with more frequent and less predictable damage, it’s hard to justify calling a class (Shaman) that has reasonable self-healing as “squishier.” This is also where the length of Hunter CDs and the lack of self-healing outside of Exhil come into play. Sure a Shaman only has one real defensive (they also have AG, but that’s more group utility I suppose), but they get the same DR for twice the duration AND twice as often as compared to SotF. Of course, the hunter has Turtle/Feign, so a Shaman may end up taking more damage overall- but they are also far more able to heal themselves.
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I mean you just cycle defensives and its a non issue.
While we have 3 one of which is an immunity, bear is insanely strong and sotf is strong but on a long cd.
Damage in wow is very predictable. Thats why a hunter that plans their defensives properly does very well at living but one who doesn’t flops.
Also don’t sleep on this point I made especially with fort pet but mm goes alright too.
Luckily we have healers in wow then! Also thanks to natural mending we get a big chunky heal fairly frequently and don’t forget fortitude of the bear actually heals you as well.
This is more of a BM problem than a MM problem. A bigger issue for MM is the cap on AOE and to a lesser extent the RNG power.