Hunters ftw

[Valmorian]

How do you parry blind.

I suspect in the same way you can be invisible while standing right in front of me with no cover for yards in every direction. ;)

[Alkiera]

Same way you dodge and parry bullets.

No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

IIRC, people were complaining earlier that you CAN'T dodge bullets/arrows, as one of the complaints against hunters.  I dunno.  It's certainly possible to miss...

Alkiera

[Ironwood]

How do you parry blind.

I suspect in the same way you can be invisible while standing right in front of me with no cover for yards in every direction. ;)

heh.  I am One with the night.

[Ironwood]

Same way you dodge and parry bullets.

No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Again, Heh.

I'm fine with dodging bullets.

Parrying them is probably a mistake you only make once...

[Zetor]

"Bullet Tooth Tony: Boris the Blade? As in Boris the Bullet-Dodger?
Cousin Avi: Why do they call him the Bullet-Dodger?
Bullet Tooth Tony: 'Cause he dodges bullets, Avi."

ahem.

Rogues have the advantage in world pvp -- you don't see them coming, and most people aren't paranoid enough to grind with ice traps behind their feet and constant flares. In battlegrounds however, stealthing can be Hard. Still, a group of 2-3 rogues and 1-2 druids is a pretty formidable strike force, especially if coordinating via voice comms.


-- Z.

[Triforcer]

Watching hunters and warlocks argue about who is more underpowered is like watching Bill Gates and Ross Perot argue that the other guy's caviar (in a gold tin) is inferior 

[kaid]

Warlocks are by no means underpowered but warlocks in pvp are a bit frustrating to play. Nearly all your powers are 2 or 3 second casts which is a lifetime in pvp. They now have lifecoil which was a long needed instant cast escape ability. Prior to that it was very very easy to mow them down because if they were under heavy attack they would never get their fears off.

Warlocks that I have seen can be good in pvp but they take a lot more effort and planning to get an effiicent pvp build going. Also they tend to wind up killing a lot of people AFTER they themselves die due to their reliance on dots.

kaid

[cevik]

Watching hunters and warlocks argue about who is more underpowered is like watching Bill Gates and Ross Perot argue that the other guy's caviar (in a gold tin) is inferior 

So.. lets get a list of the overpowered classes in WoW:

Warlocks (omg nerf fear)
Hunters (omg multi shot)
Shaman (omg frost shock!)
Warriors (omg 2 shot)
Rogues (omg stunlock)
Druids (omg Moonkin)
Mages (omg 1 shot)
Priests (omg melts faces)
Paladin (omg bubble)

There, did we leave any out?

Wait, that's all of them?  Interesting..

[cevik]

Warlocks that I have seen can be good in pvp but they take a lot more effort and planning to get an effiicent pvp build going. Also they tend to wind up killing a lot of people AFTER they themselves die due to their reliance on dots.

My friends biggest cry about nerfing warlocks is that DoTs are "way overpowered."  I asked him wtf he's talking about, he said "well I can kill any warlock, but I always end up dying a few seconds later, that's totally unfair."

I said I'd gladly trade all my DoTs for insta cast nukes that do the same damage, then he would be dead before he could kill me, rather than after I died.  He no longer wanted to discuss the subject (though, he still says DoTs are overpowered).

[Righ]

I said I'd gladly trade all my DoTs for insta cast nukes that do the same damage

Moonfire! Moonfire! Moonfire! Flip, flip, flip, Natures Swiftness, Healing Touch. Moonfire!

The only downside is how tediously slow druids are to level up. That and the whole elf or cow thing.

[Triforcer]

Watching hunters and warlocks argue about who is more underpowered is like watching Bill Gates and Ross Perot argue that the other guy's caviar (in a gold tin) is inferior 

So.. lets get a list of the overpowered classes in WoW:

Warlocks (omg nerf fear)
Hunters (omg multi shot)
Shaman (omg frost shock!)
Warriors (omg 2 shot)
Rogues (omg stunlock)
Druids (omg Moonkin)
Mages (omg 1 shot)
Priests (omg melts faces)
Paladin (omg bubble)

There, did we leave any out?

Wait, that's all of them?  Interesting..

Mages are way, way underpowered.  At best, they are at the end of the patch buff list and at worst they aren't even getting their own patch (some dev supposedly said this).

Hunters and warlocks are the two god classes right now.  Shamans, druids and rogues are all competitive.  Mages, priests, paladins and warriors are at the short end of the stick.

[Rasix]

Did you forget the green text somewhere? 

[Paelos]

A warrior has never killed a mage that wasn't already dying or didn't have his head up his ass. End of story.

Mages are not underpowered.

[Calantus]

I think Triforcer lives in some strange parallel WoW universe.

If someone asked me "I want to play a powerful class, which one should I roll", I'd say:

- Warrior
- Warlock
- Hunter

These are the 3 strongest IMO, but there are no gimp classes, and there's not even room to argue certain classes are gimp (unless you're playing a paladin as something other than support, I'm not quite sure how well that works out these days).


EDIT: Warrior->Charge->Hamstring, Mage->Nova, Warrior->Trinket, Mage->Blink, Warrior->Intercept... dead mage.

Actually a mage can live through it if they trinket out of the stun and PoM->Polymorph the warrior, or if they have iceblock. But the above sequence generally works. The mage wins if the warrior can't break the nova though of course.

[Triforcer]

A warrior has never killed a mage that wasn't already dying or didn't have his head up his ass. End of story.

Mages are not underpowered.

You sound like a guy who has seen omgwtfbbq screenshots of 1 of the 3 mages with AP, ToEP, and the other +dmg trinket critting a frostbolt for 4k.  99% of mages can't do that and die to Charge/Blink/Intercept/Unstoppable Force ftw.

[cevik]

You sound like a guy who has seen omgwtfbbq screenshots of 1 of the 3 mages with AP, ToEP, and the other +dmg trinket critting a frostbolt for 4k.  99% of mages can't do that and die to Charge/Blink/Intercept/Unstoppable Force ftw.

Mages rock.  Period.  I am on a team of 4 mages, a lock, 2 warriors, a priest and a hunter and the mages fucking own EVERYONE.  They make it through every pvp without a death and with millions of kbs.  I can keep up with them on my lock, but I can kill 2, sometimes 3 (rather inexperienced) people at a time (fear, seduce, HoT), I never ever ever see them fighting less than 4.  Mages rock.

Everyone pvper I've seen that is "the best" has been a mage.  Mages simply rock.  Granted they are probably not EASY, but neither are locks (or hunters according to Righ) and they are still "overpowered".  Every single class comes along and claims to be "underpowered" and that's exactly my point, no one really is.

[Merusk]

Once again it's a question of Itemization. Warriors are Uber if they have the right gear.  However, 80% of the warriors you see are going after Valor and Dal'Rends swords or Arcanite Reaper.  In the case of that 80% I'd have to agree that they're a little underpowered, and then qualify it with, "they're also under equipped."

[Calantus]

I'd also say they were ill-equipped. Only the shoulders and chest from valor are the top blues for the slot. A warrior in top blue armor and an arc reaper can hold their own very well against other top-blue classes. Also, if your server has AVs up often there is no excuse not to have a TuF and don julios, it's only marginally harder to farm than a reaper.

I think a lot of people run around with sub-par blues getting owned by epicced players and just assume their class is crap or something.

[Register]

Been playing AB quite abit with my warlock (SM/DS)recently so here's some observations....

Warriors are at the top of the food chain with mages as the only counter... if they have good gear. Been fighting warriors with Untamed blades and they are seriously very scary - anything in melee range dies in seconds.

Don't find hunters that scary actually. The aimed shots and multishots do hurt, but much of the hunter's range dps requires him to stand still.... and 1-2 melees on a hunter ties him up effectively. For me, if my death coil is up I usually win with a insta curse, insta dot, insta dot, insta weakness on pet while charging towards him, then a death coil and drain life waiting for nightfall to proc. Maybe there aren't enough epic hunters on Blackrock *shrug*.

Epic rogues are freaking scary. The epic geared rogues kills me so fast that i am dead before a single cheapshot-kidney shot combo is over. Blue rogues are generally no sweat if death coil is up.

And mages with epic gear are very very far from gimp - and the frost mages are also quite tough with ice barrier, ice block and cold snap. Vs node zergs 2-3 good mages timing their IAE and blast waves = the win.

Druids and warriors are a very solid combo in AB. The druids can stay alive while healing, and cannot be polyed, and the warrior's intimidation shout is great for scattering,  the perma snare with hamstring means most classes simply cannot get away once charged/intercepted, and the mana-less high dps of the warrior makes him a deadly killing machine if there is healing support.

[Fabricated]

As a warrior in middling quality gear I found myself not having a hard time with anything outside of mages and better equipped warriors...in an environment where neither of us are getting much/any support from our teammates outside of them keeping the other team busy.

Epic'd warriors, shit, let's be honest, warriors with JUST a better weapon than mine beat me if they know how to play their class. Mages eat me alive if I can't break their nova via trinket/luck/dispell/potion, because even hamstrung a decent mage can kite you enough to kill you before you get them to that magic 20% health number (which for cloth wearers means 0% when facing down a warrior with a decent blue+ two-hander). I can kill a mage dead right quick if they're stupid or the gods smile on me, but the odds just aren't in my favor.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I simply eat druids and shaman alive. I do the traditional "hi 2 u" warrior introduction of a charge or intercept into a hamstring and after that their HP simply decreases much faster than mine does.

Rogues tend to clonk me and skedaddle off to softer targets, and if they stay to fight, they usually can't outlast me unless they have much better daggers or swords.

Hunters I hardly ever have a problem with. Pretend the pet doesn't exist, and if you have Intimidating Shout queued up it may as well not exist...and that leaves you against what is basically a shitty warrior. A lot of hunters freak (or at least that's what it looks like to me) when they can't get out of melee range with you.

Priests pretty much die in direct combat unless they fear you and their buddies notice you're beating up their healer. If the enemy team has their head and ass wired together hitting the priest gets you more attention than you'd probably care for.

As for pallies, I don't know, I haven't PVPed at high levels on a horde character. Assuming the sort-of one-on-one battles that go on a lot in PUG PVP can have my experience dueling applied to them, pallies take a LOT of killing. a LOT. Their damage output is glacial compared to yours, but decently equipped and specced they're extremely hard to outlast.

[Righ]

The only hunters that can reasonably survive long enough toe-to-toe with a warrior to regain range and control of the fight is a survival-oriented hunter. It's not an easy task and relies rather a lot on several lucky 'rolls'. Druids and shamans should be causing you more trouble than they are, and neither should be a certain win in every case. Shapeshifting gets rid of the hamstring, root forces you to burn your trinket, bear form lets druids go toe to toe for an extended period, natures swiftness lets then flash off an instant heal for 80% of their health, root, mana dump via spamfire, back to bear to finish. Shamans should be thowing out purge early, spewing totems (grounding, earthbind, searing) and forcing you to dump your rage into sweeping strikes, to keep you from MSing them and reducing their heal effectiveness. If you ignore the totems, they should allow them to kite you long enough to cause some serious trouble with shocks. They'll have a trinket too, plus their shocks can snare you as effectively as you can snare them, and much more frequently than you can reciprocate.

But yeah, warriors are a tough act for anybody in PvP, including mages to a degree, because one fuckup or resist, and they're at the graveyard.

[Zetor]

kek @ mages being underpowered.

Mages are fine. They have the only reliable CC in the game that can be made insta-cast, they have the best AOE and insane burst damage capability. They're also one of the most valuable classes in battlegrounds due to AOE power.

Anyway, my (blue geared, SM/DS -- it's a horrible pvp spec, imo) warlock's experience with other classes:
- other warlocks: If they have 5/8 felheart, I lose, otherwise it's about spec (SL beats affliction beats SM/ruin beats SL) and who banishes / deathcoils first.
- hunters: Blue hunters are easy, dot 'em up, get in the deadzone and draintank. Epic hunters can 3-shot me.
- shaman: Stupid shaman (the sort that use an arcanite reaper, wear omg crit gear and the only spell they use is frost shock) are fodder, but smart shaman (1h/shield abusing tremor / grounding) last long enough to get 7-8 shocks in, and then I die.
- warriors: Anything up to TuF / blue pvp gear I can draintank. Warriors with epix not so much, they tend to 2.5-shot me (the .5 is execute). I've fought someone wielding an Askhandi and I died before charge stun was over. Granted, the assist train was focusing on me, but the warrior hit me for 30% of my hp right away.
- rogues: Yeah, like Register said, blue rogues are easy, even if they get the jump, deathcoil gives me all the time/space needed for my dots to kill them. Epic geared rogues kill me before cheapshot/kidneyshot are over (check the e-peen video posted earlier in this thread).
- druids: Eh... they can't really KILL me, but I usually can't kill them before they get away either.
- mages: Warlocks are the anti-mage.. even without a pet I can mess them up bad. Unless it's an ice spec mage with insane spellpower and the two trinkets, 'cos that means a 2-shot. And no Triforcer, that's NOT rare. Every 2nd mage I see in battlegrounds has at least the hakkar trinket.
- priests: Shadow priests >>> warlocks. Undead shadow priests especially.. they can fear me, I can't fear them, and by the time fear is over, I'm down to 30%. The only spec that can reliably kill priests (even holy/disc) dies to hunters, smart rogues and shaman. Any other spec will simply run oom.
- paladins: They're weaksauce, even tier 2s. If they have decursive, just spam level 1 dots on them; otherwise fear+drain mana.

Gee, I'm starting to see a pattern about what makes a character from any class being easy / impossible to kill... heh heh.


-- Z.

[SurfD]

Mmages, in my opinion, are broken.  And yes, I play a partially BWL equipped mage, and am lookin to get decked out in full Netherwind, with maybe some of the nifty +damage gear from there for giggles.

Why are mages broken?  Because to be even remotely effective in any form of PVP, 31 points in arcane talents, 2 crazy trinkets, and a lot of plus damage is pretty much mandatory.

The fire and Ice magic trees are pretty much worthless past 20 points.  Deep Ice builds are pretty much exclusively PvE, and Deep  Fire is almost completely useless in its endtree stuff, when compared to Arcane.

Sure, we are 3 minute GODS when we have those talents/trinkets/+damage, but any other spec in PvP is pretty much garbage (I know, since I have, as an experiment, never respecced from 11 Arcane / 40 Fire).  We are one trick cookie cutter ponies.

Oh, and for your big numbers, the +damage, +crit whore fire mage of DOOM in my guild recently recorded his latest highest number: approximately 6100 damage (before igninte) off of a fullbore trinket/talent Pyroblast.

I will see if i can find a Screenshot.

[Zetor]

To be fair, the same thing could be said of warriors not speccing for MS / wearing tanking gear...
... or combat-specced rogues using balanced gear instead of pure agi/AP...
... or holy priests. :P
For some classes, you need to spec a certain way to be viable in pvp at all.


-- Z.

[Jobu]

Why are mages broken?  Because to be even remotely effective in any form of PVP, 31 points in arcane talents, 2 crazy trinkets, and a lot of plus damage is pretty much mandatory.

The fire and Ice magic trees are pretty much worthless past 20 points.  Deep Ice builds are pretty much exclusively PvE, and Deep  Fire is almost completely useless in its endtree stuff, when compared to Arcane.

I'm starting to notice this on my mage. I got him to 60 just earlier in the week, and have been getting my feet wet in AB and WSG. And I noticed that I cannot kill for shit with my 18Arc/33Frost build. Instead of waiting forever to gear up with +dmg stuff, I'm tempted to go deep arcane to help out the burst damage problem I have. It's a gray area because I'm still learning the mage's endgame playstyle/niche...

It seems like ALL classes (not just some of them) hit the same wall at 60. You have to respec to a very narrow set of options and learn a new playstyle to fight effectively compared to how you played pre-60. But I guess that's kind of the beauty of the talent system.

[Xanthippe]

It seems like ALL classes (not just some of them) hit the same wall at 60. You have to respec to a very narrow set of options and learn a new playstyle to fight effectively compared to how you played pre-60. But I guess that's kind of the beauty of the talent system.

Exactly.  Also pvp builds and pve builds are very different.

Earlier when I said I got excited after critting an aimed shot for 1850 (once) - my typical autoshot damage is in the 150-180ish range.  My typical aimed shot is in the 500-600 range.  This is a 31/20/0 spec (beastmaster, marksmanship, survival).  Worked well for soloing up, but not so great for end game instances.  Seems to stink for pvp (although I haven't done much of it - maybe it's just that I stink in pvp).

[Merusk]

I've been a marks hunter and remained a marks hunter my entire career.  I used to have a 5/31/15 build but, personally, I think Survival is Ass.  The "tricks" don't help enough vs the gimpy ranged damage. (You need something like 450+ BASE (pre talent) Agi to make-up for Trueshot/ Multishot)

I switched to a 14/31/6 build and I'm doing fine in PvP and PvE both.

[Hoax]

This thread makes me fucking giggle under my breath every time I check on it.  Seriously have any of you people ever played the other "pvp" MMO's if you have THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Seriously WoW's balance issues are nothing compared to every other game with PvP I've ever touched (which is all of them except AC1, god I wish I had played AC1).

WoW has a few minor balance problems that would cease to exist if a few obvious bugs were removed.  Hunters spent the first 5-8 months from launch with most of their abilities only half working.  Don't get on their asses now because they have the most fun, Hunters have always had the most fun in group vrs group I could have told you that (in fact I bet I did post it) a few months from launch.  They have range, durability and some nifty tricks.  They are a fun class, they DO NOT break the game.  Fucking anyone with top gear can break the game.

Stop blaming the classes and start blaming the tards at Blizz who are making the new fucking weapons.  The new armor doesn't scale with this shit at all.  At the rate they are going by the time Burning Crusade comes out whoever hits the other person first will win, because everything will be a 1-shot kill.

Rogues are underpowered, lolz, I'm sorry that all the pvp has moved to lame ass instances I dont like it either but that hardly makes a stealther gimped...  l2p jesus fucking christ.

[AcidCat]

- shaman: Stupid shaman (the sort that use an arcanite reaper, wear omg crit gear and the only spell they use is frost shock) are fodder, but smart shaman (1h/shield abusing tremor / grounding) last long enough to get 7-8 shocks in, and then I die.

This seems a strange assesment to me - being a clothie, the sort of shammies that "use an arcanite reaper" should be wrecking your day with hard hits and lucky devastating Windfury procs - a shield is doing a shammie no good at all against your spells, so that wouldn't make him last any longer - and of course tremor, grounding, and proper use of shocks are just as easy to do whether you're using a 2hander or 1h/shield. Using a 2 hander is hardly any indication of a "stupid" shaman - especially since many "smart" shaman carry both setups and will quickly and quite reasonably switch to their 2hander when going against a cloth wearing class.

[Righ]

(You need something like 450+ BASE (pre talent) Agi to make-up for Trueshot/ Multishot)

You need a touch over 420 to compensate for the loss of Trueshot Aura (100 RAP), Ranged Weapon Specialisation (5%) and Barrage (5% on Multishot). You're trading off for Lightning Reflexes (+15% agility : 1 agility = 2 RAP and 1/52% crit), Surefooted (+3% to hit), Killer Instinct (+3% crit). In PvP the increased agility helping dodge and parry, the extra 10% health, counterattack, etc makes even the unbuffed solo reduction worthwhile. Buffed, the break even point drops significantly. In raids, having a less epic equipped marksman hunter provide you with TSA, a shaman with air, mongoose potion and winter squid makes it highly valuable to put even hunters with more than around 380 unbuffed agility into survival spec.

Having got used to a raptor strike with a 50% chance of a crit, I'd be hard pressed to go 14/31/6, though thick hide (>6200 armor wolf) and a quick rez (handy in non battlegrounds PvP) are good things. If I hadn't got to the point where I could get over 630 agility buffed, I might consider a 10/31/10 solo build.

[Zetor]

This seems a strange assesment to me - being a clothie, the sort of shammies that "use an arcanite reaper" should be wrecking your day with hard hits and lucky devastating Windfury procs - a shield is doing a shammie no good at all against your spells, so that wouldn't make him last any longer - and of course tremor, grounding, and proper use of shocks are just as easy to do whether you're using a 2hander or 1h/shield. Using a 2 hander is hardly any indication of a "stupid" shaman - especially since many "smart" shaman carry both setups and will quickly and quite reasonably switch to their 2hander when going against a cloth wearing class.

Not really... a shaman with an AR is typically in hunter gear (all AGI, maybe STR, +crit, etc) and has little mana. I have enough HP to withstand even the nastiest windfury combo, and then he has no answer to deathcoil. These shaman typically spam earthbind and frost shock as an attempt to keep their prey slowed... my felhunter can dispel both, so yeah. Earthbind means no tremor, which means all I need is a fear (easy since they can't earthshock after they frostshock), and they're going down. They typically don't have the mana pool to outlast my dots via heals, either.

Just my experience... a 21/7/22 (or similar) build focusing on shocks (double damage crits) and uninterruptible heals is a LOT more scary than a stormstrike  or enhancement/NS build. 21/7/22 can't use 2h axes or maces, so they stick to 1h/shield. It doesn't help much against a caster type (aside from the extra stats and maybe the felhunter melee.. hah), but in group pvp, it makes them a warrior-level target instead of a rogue/hunter-level squishy. Big difference.


-- Z.

[AcidCat]

Not really... a shaman with an AR is typically in hunter gear (all AGI, maybe STR, +crit, etc) and has little mana.

Thanks for clarifying your point, though I do think you're making an awful lot of assumptions about a Shaman's spec, gear, and playstyle just based on what type of weapon they've currently got equipped. Though I'm a 0/30/21 build and am often swinging my 2 hander in PvP (No AR here, just a humble yet servicable Twig of the World Tree), my gear still focuses mainly on stamina and intellect. And frankly any Shaman that is dropping Earthbind instead of Tremor when fighting a warlock deserves to lose.

[Merusk]

Thanks for clarifying, Righ. Now i've got a different question along the same vein, what's your HP/ Stam at with your Agi that high?  I imagine you're all in purples as well, yes?  I can see the advantage to switching, but the majority of hunters are NOT there.

  I outdamge better-equipped (though not so well-equipped as yourself) hunters in my crappy blue set, which always gives me a giggle.  When I ask about spec, they've been doing the survival thing becuase they read it Roxorz, but didn't read the info on what you need to MAKE it roxorz.

[Righ]

Right - survival only rocks once you have the gear for it. It's not entirely wrong to use it for a character that spends their time doing a lot of world PvP, though you're still better off having friends than trying to be capable of taking care of yourself when forced into melee. Hunters are about ranged damage, so play to their strengths.

Can't recall my health offhand, but over 5000 buffed. The epic sets are decent for that too, though that's incidental - I'd pick agility over a mix of agility and stamina in every case. Not a glass cannon, but definately not planning to tank stuff. We may have mail armor, but we have no shield.

[Hoax]

The same can be said for warriors, if you are truly l33t and have the best of the best with honors in terms of gear.  Then Frenzy actually trumps MS in terms of damage.  Coupled with the fact 31fury/20arms > 31arms/20fury this means that people who actually pay attention to the metagame and are fully geared out warriors really have no excuse to not go Fury.

But in order to have the #'s work out you need to have crazy fucking high atk power, I forget what the magic number is.