Hunters ftw

[DevilsAdvocate]

Our stealth... Well, it doesn't work.  It really, really doesn't.  Hunters Mark is awful against us, unless you're constantly popping the Resto potions.  Hunters pets, through a bizarre selection of bugs, can see us no bother.  Vanish is just ASS.  Seriously, it doesn't get rid of the mark and it doesn't actually work half the time.

I think I know what you are saying, but only because you can't see what the hunter is seeing. I am not 100% certain, but I am betting on an addon in conjunction with a bug. If my pet is attacking a rogue and I get a Hunter's Mark on him and he vanishes, my pet has always been fooled by it. All the way from release to the latest patch. But, if I can see you still because of the mark, I can tell my pet to attack you, and even though you are stealthed, my pet will attack you. In other words, if I can see you, then my pet can be told to attack you and will do so. That is the part that may be bugged. If my pet can't see you, he shouldn't be able to attack you, regardless if I can see you or not.

I am guessing there is an addon out there somewhere that makes it so that when pet loses target due to vanish, but hunter still has target, pet is given an order to continue attacking that target automatically. It is probably similar to those addons that reacquire targets when you are feared. I don't use those because I (my personal opinion, nothing more) think it is a form of cheating. I also have never gotten past rank 3 in pvp, since I don't really like pvp in WoW, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.

[Righ]

No, there's a horrible bug out there. Put your pet on aggressive and go stand on a flag in the AB battleground. As a rogue approaches, the pet will attack the rogue, irrespective of addons or you having sight of the rogue - its a bug in the aggressive behaviour of pets. Needless to say, you should warn a hunter that has a pet on aggressive (irrespective of whether they appear to be using it to detect rogues/druids) in PvP to desist, and if they don't, report them. Might not stop the player or get them in trouble, but Blizzard are more likely to fix something if they have realm GMs reporting many such complaints.

[DevilsAdvocate]

That is a bug I was not aware of. My pet is nearly always on Passive unless I am out farming and then only on Defensive. I don't think I have ever used Aggressive except maybe once to see what it did. In AV, the only BG I ever really spent any time in, my pet was pretty worthless as he would run off after whomever I sent him after and, before I could tell him to come back, would end up stunned and destroyed. So, I usually didn't bother seeing what my pet was doing in BG's.

[Nevermore]

Wow, they haven't fixed that aggressive pet bug yet?  It's been around since beta.

[Morfiend]

Okay. Poor rogues, its such a tough class.

Rogues are an awsome class. I love my class, and I would never play any other as my main. But Im not complaining about Hunters soly as a rogue. Hunters are overpowered in general, hunters are the new easy mode. It just the Rogue vs Hunter matchup is even more one sided. Some thing else I forgot to bring up in the other post, was that the rogues main for of out of stealth defence is dodge. Well guess what, ranged attacks cant be dodged. Blah.

Also, to Ironwood. Thats a myth about not wanting to dodge vs a MS warrior. You ARE going to dodge him quite a bit, so his overpower will be triggered. Its better to use evasion and hopefully dodge the hamstring/rend. Anyway, if you know how to beat a warrior, he should hardly hit you. Rupture kiting works like a charm on warriors.

[Rasix]

This is from a WSG.  Guy had at least 4 other 3k+ crits in that game.

[Ironwood]

Also, to Ironwood. Thats a myth about not wanting to dodge vs a MS warrior. You ARE going to dodge him quite a bit, so his overpower will be triggered. Its better to use evasion and hopefully dodge the hamstring/rend. Anyway, if you know how to beat a warrior, he should hardly hit you. Rupture kiting works like a charm on warriors.

No, I know.  I comfort myself with the fact when Sulfurons Hammer comes crashing down on my napper.

[Righ]

This is from a WSG.  Guy had at least 4 other 3k+ crits in that game.

Okay, I'll take the bait. That's the BWL crossbow, and the guy is a 0/21/30 spec hunter with a mix of T2 and T1 epic armor. You do realise that both warlocks and warriors can outdamage that without any BWL gear, right?

[Rasix]

Yep, you're spot on with his gears/spec.  One of the most common things heard on vent is "Goddamnit, Burke", since he tends to pull aggro with just autoshot even if he's cycling FD.

Really, there are a lot classes that just get disgusting with BWL gear. We have a DPS warrior that does insane damage and he'll get even worse when he blows his load on Ashkandi (if it ever drops for us, this guild has terrible luck with drops), and yes, a lot of his gear is non-BWL (a lot of Hakkar shit, though).  All DPS classes are tending to get quite disgusting while hybrids (druids, shaman) lag somewhat behind in the "gear == uber killing machine" equation although I can probably now outheal any pre-MC priest.

[Mesozoic]

Yep, you're spot on with his gears/spec.  One of the most common things heard on vent is "Goddamnit, Burke", since he tends to pull aggro with just autoshot even if he's cycling FD.

Edit:  misread, thought he was trying to pull with autoshoot.

[Righ]

The chasm between a well-equipped non-raid character and somebody deep into the raiding end-game has become so extreme in WoW that any level 60 battlegrounds other than Alterac Valley (where there's enough folks to random sides up some) are usually one-sided affairs. I remember when on Earthen Ring the Alliance won almost everything largely because they had about a dozen established raid guilds and the horde had one (and their members didn't PvP). Now both sides field pre-made teams packed to the gunwales with epic gear grinding out honor, and the level 60 pickup game is pretty futile. The most favored PvP instances have become the level 40-50 range twinked alts (because they can have mounts but not raid gear).

Blizzard once had an idea of making every class roughly able to do similar DPS such that there would be no DPS class at all, which seemed pretty sensible. Of course it was the hunters, mages and rogues that whined and said they had "nothing to offer groups except DPS" and that that would be unfair. I think the current thinking in Blizzard is to buff mages in the near future to make them the DPS kings again, heh, so we'll see how that little venture pans out in the next patch or three.

[Zetor]

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. My warrior equipped with DM/UBRS blues, stronghold gauntlets/lionheart helm went up against a random hordie wielding a Rag hammer and decked out in full BWL gear... I barely lasted 5-6 hits while not being able to put up a dent in him at all, and that was WITH a druid throwing me a heal or two.

I believe there's a certain stage in uber gear [mostly BWL and Rag stuff] where they make a character play completely differently. The crossbow enabling 4k aimed shot is a good example, but so is the TOEP/ZHC/AP frostbolt spam for 3k+ a hit, the 5/8 felheart demonology bonus that makes a soul link warlock pretty much unkillable, Askhandi [duh], that dagger from BWL that can do 3k ambushes with the proper gear, etc.

High-end BGs are starting to become organized honor farms, too. It's kinda sad when the ONLY people queuing on the other side are 3 uberguilds with their pre-made teams, on voice comms. Good luck trying to do anything against them solo or in a pug other than being a speed bump... :p


-- Z.

[Nebu]

High-end BGs are starting to become organized honor farms, too. It's kinda sad when the ONLY people queuing on the other side are 3 uberguilds with their pre-made teams, on voice comms. Good luck trying to do anything against them solo or in a pug other than being a speed bump... :p

Is anyone really surprised by this?   

[Triforcer]

High-end BGs are starting to become organized honor farms, too. It's kinda sad when the ONLY people queuing on the other side are 3 uberguilds with their pre-made teams, on voice comms. Good luck trying to do anything against them solo or in a pug other than being a speed bump... :p

Is anyone really surprised by this?   

I am, but I'm stupid and easily tricked.

[Phred]

This is from a WSG.  Guy had at least 4 other 3k+ crits in that game.

Okay, I'll take the bait. That's the BWL crossbow, and the guy is a 0/21/30 spec hunter with a mix of T2 and T1 epic armor. You do realise that both warlocks and warriors can outdamage that without any BWL gear, right?

What's really messed up for hunters is that other than that bwl crossbow, the next closest high damage weapons for these kind of aimed shot numbers are from Strath and Scholo. Another manifestation of that stupid atk power/speed of game design that made for crazy ms/rogue ambush numbers before it was normalized.

Even hunters are calling for it to be normalized on their weapons, dispite aimed shot and multi not being instant shots.

[Righ]

Next highest is the blue crossbow from the AV battleground reward, then the Strath one, followed by the epic hunter quest bow. The hunter quest bow will outperform the two blue crossbows, but its more marginal than it should be when its possible to spam aimed+multi such as in most raid situations. There's then a couple of recent epic crossbows that are just an edge too fast and come from the world dragons. Again, they're still better except for raid hunters spamming aimed+multi. The rest of the purple bows and guns including all the MC stuff are easily beaten by the two blue crossbows to the point where you'd only use the purple stuff in situations where you can't break crowd control. It all comes down to the fact that (as you say) ranged attack power is related to speed and that no fiddle factor has been put in for 'instants' unlike for melee attacks. And it is kind of unfortunate that hunters have to wait until the second last boss in BWL to get a weapon upgrade, but then with Lightning Reflexes, they get a better upgrade just from the agility they can get off tier 1 armor anyhow (so quit yer bitchin raid hunters).

[Morfiend]

Its a bummer that one of the main damage dealing abilities of the rogue, eviserate, gets no better no matter what gear they use. Rogues are one of the classes that see the least improvment from high end gear. Dagger rogues can see a bit of a damage boost on ambush and backstab, but nothing like a warrior in full BWL gear.

[Zetor]

Its a bummer that one of the main damage dealing abilities of the rogue, eviserate, gets no better no matter what gear they use. Rogues are one of the classes that see the least improvment from high end gear. Dagger rogues can see a bit of a damage boost on ambush and backstab, but nothing like a warrior in full BWL gear.

pew pew

:p


-- Z.
</troll>

[cevik]

This is from a WSG.  Guy had at least 4 other 3k+ crits in that game.

Okay, I'll take the bait. That's the BWL crossbow, and the guy is a 0/21/30 spec hunter with a mix of T2 and T1 epic armor. You do realise that both warlocks and warriors can outdamage that without any BWL gear, right?

You do realize that Warlocks were nerfed last patch, and even epic geared with the two trinks can no longer do this kind of crit damage, right?

EDIT:  You also realize that Warlocks can't wear mail armor, and can't do that kind of damage from a range further than any other class can hit in the game.. in addition, warlocks have one snare, and it's crappy (90% of your run speed FTW!) and it takes talents to unlock it.  Hunters have two great snares, the longest range in the game, mail armor, and crits that are twice as big as the best (once a month, with epic trinkets and the perfect build, on a 4 second cast time spell (with talents, 6 seconds without), with +500 damage gear) warlock crits.

[Xanthippe]

I just hit 60 on my hunter (31/20/0).  I get excited when I get a crit for 1850.  (No, I haven't pvped much at all.)

What a difference equipment and spec make, eh?

[Ironwood]

And we're off again.

[cevik]

I just hit 60 on my hunter (31/20/0).  I get excited when I get a crit for 1850.  (No, I haven't pvped much at all.)

Now you're starting to talk about the range that epic geared warlocks with ToEP and ZHC can crit at since last patch.  And they can't do it from 41 yards away, while wearing mail armor.

[Righ]

EDIT:  You also realize that Warlocks can't wear mail armor, and can't do that kind of damage from a range further than any other class can hit in the game.. in addition, warlocks have one snare, and it's crappy (90% of your run speed FTW!) and it takes talents to unlock it.  Hunters have two great snares, the longest range in the game, mail armor, and crits that are twice as big as the best (once a month, with epic trinkets and the perfect build, on a 4 second cast time spell (with talents, 6 seconds without), with +500 damage gear) warlock crits.

That's because it's fucking swings and roundabouts. If warlocks were shite nobody would play them. I've beaten almost every class with almost every other class in a fair fight (and been beaten in turn). The balance isn't as bad as the nerf herders like to make out. Warlocks have no dead zone, their spells are unimpeded by the wonderful mail armor of a hunter, and they have 38 billion hit points. Etc, etc.

So lets get this straight, we've established that rogues are hard done by in WoW, warlocks are hard done by in WoW, and we're moving on. Who's next on the fucking cry me a river boat?

[Rasix]

I just hit 60 on my hunter (31/20/0).  I get excited when I get a crit for 1850.  (No, I haven't pvped much at all.)

What a difference equipment and spec make, eh?

1850 is higher than I've ever hit on my shaman with any one attack. :) Although I suppose a frost shock/windfury hit/ns-chain lightning might do that much in a span of a second.  Fear the crazy mana-tide shaman DPS that relies on pure luck. 

Kinda psyched to get my hunter up.  I've always wanted a long range bomber.  Hard to level fast though with raid commitments.

[Righ]

Ah okay. Shaman are hard done by. This gets more surreal by the minute.

[Rasix]

So lets get this straight, we've established that rogues are hard done by in WoW, warlocks are hard done by in WoW, and we're moving on. Who's next on the fucking cry me a river boat?

Can I cry now that my raid specced shaman has bad DPS? May I?  (I'm interested in how they twink our specs in 1.11, mana-tide is of questionable use.)

Heh, all whining and crying aside... any epic geared class is a beast in battlegrounds and can royally fuck you up if you're not on your toes, especially if they've taken their raid gear and gone pvp spec. Hunters just scare me a little more than the rest.  Mages and warlocks sure put the fear into me too, though.  I'm less concerned about melee, since I can effectively keep them at range if I need to.

[Rasix]

Ah okay. Shaman are hard done by. This gets more surreal by the minute.

You're a bit slow on the uptake today, aren't ya?  I was being facetious.

Edit: Shaman's aren't "hard done by" in any sense.  We could use some talent tweaks to make our resto tree blow less ass, but elemental and enhance are fine for what they attempt to accomplish.  I just like to make fun of my DPS whenever available.

[Righ]

Shaman does have mediocre DPS, especially if you have to go heavy in restoration. However, healing is one of the killer abilities, along with range and stealth. There's also a fair few other benefits to being a shaman too. There's so many little tricks available from all the totem fun that you learn new stuff for longer than when playing other classes. I think its about the most fun class to play in WoW.

One of the biggest problems with hunters in raid gear is that they are ALL PvP spec. Really a hunter brings very little to a raid other than ranged DPS, and their forte in PvP happens to be ranged DPS, since they can't stealth, heal, AoE, CC, or much anything else worth shit. Most other classes are compromised in PvP to some degree in order to best suit raiding. Almost every other tool in their arsenal is about snaring somebody long enough to get back out of their confounded deadspot and into range to do more DPS. When you understand how single minded a hunter fighting you has to be, they're uncommonly easy to force into mistakes. The biggest problem since 1.7 has been that hunters with 5/8 or more tier 1 armor can realistically go survival with next to no ranged damage reduction, which gives them not only more tools to snare, but arguably one of the most overpowered melee attackss in the game, simply because its on somebody that shouldn't have any melee advantages. It also probably wasn't reasonable to lower the hawk eye talent, allowing it to be used by non-marksman specs, since that's the one talent basically every hunter needs for raiding.

What would solve 90% or more of the valid concerns with hunters in PvP would be to tone down their armor benefits. Same is true of warriors. I still contend that neither class is especially overpowered. They become more overpowered than some classes in the late game because they are so gear centric. It's no accident that a million farmers chose rogues (fastest to level, most powerful without gear) until Blizzard failed to remove farming accounts, at which point they felt it was safe to invest time in gearing up hunters to farm with. Not only do geared hunters match rogues for DPS pretty well, but they have tools like feign death and a pet that are positively nirvana for farmers.

[cevik]

So lets get this straight, we've established that rogues are hard done by in WoW, warlocks are hard done by in WoW, and we're moving on. Who's next on the fucking cry me a river boat?

No, I think all of those classes are pretty balanced.  I was pointing out that the Warlock has some drawbacks to their "massive" critting ability that can't even crit as massively as a hunter.  Someone said "hunters can crit big" you responded "so can warlocks, so nyah" and I said "yeah, but hunters crit big and don't have to suffer from the glass cannon syndrome."  Your next response was basically "Warlocks can take Soul Link and have massive hitpoints, so it doesn't matter that hunters can wear mail armor", which btw, unless you know something I don't know, they can't have both Soul Link AND Ruin, so they choose either huge crits or survivability.. hunters have both.

But in all honesty, my main complaint about hunters is that they can keep you at range with their uber ranged snares (one of the best snares in the game, instant cast, ranged) and they can hit you FROM FUTHER THAN ANY OTHER CLASS IN THE GAME.  In other words, they can keep you at 41 yards and pummel you and you can't do anything in return.  You can't cast, not even your instant casts, you can't close in because they have you snared, you can do nothing.  It's silly to give one class longer range than any other class.

Changed ranged to 30 yards, just like spells, and make hawkeye take it to 36 yards, just like every spell caster.  Just like that, hunters are balanced.  Conversly, you could make all distance spells have a 35 yard range, and have all the "ranged" talents on casters bump up to 41 yards.  As it stands, allowing one class the ability to hold you at range and beat on you at a longer range than any other class in the game is just stupid and obviously unbalacing.. 

[Righ]

One class eh? See flame throwing (mage) which extends their range to 41 yards as well. How does a hunter snare you perpetually from 41 yards, out of interest?

[cevik]

One class eh? See flame throwing (mage) which extends their range to 41 yards as well.

Oops you are right, I missed mages having a 41 yard range.  Probably because mages can't snare me at that range, thus every other class just runs forward 5 yards until they get into range.  Plus it only works on fire spells (unlike a hunter where every single one of their abilities is increased in range).

How does a hunter snare you perpetually from 41 yards, out of interest?

4 second instant cast 41 yard snare + 3 second cast 41 yard major nuke + instant cast 41 yard major aoe dd nuke and/or instant cast 41 yard single target nuke == 4.5 secs till death.  Though you are right, I do have a good .5 seconds to get close enough to cast one of my instant casts on them..

Hell, the crit above would one shot my priest, he wouldn't even have to burn his second shot on me.. AND he has autoshoot at that range, so while he's waiting on cooldowns he's still doing damage, unlike any other caster class, who do not have damage abilities between spells..

Either hunters need a nerf, or the other classes need a bit of a buff to catch up.  But as it stands, hunters are not in line with the abilities of the other classes..

EDIT:  I think the real problem is itemization.  I said this last night in /guild.  Basically the game was balanced for the items in the game at the time of release.  Slowly they are forced to put bigger and bigger items in the game, to keep the epeen's growing in size.  As they do this, the classes become more and more out of balance, a slight different before becomes a huge difference now.  Then they start the "revamping" of the classes.. they revamp the classes more along the lines of what the current items can do.  The classes that are "revamped" end up fucking uber because they are balanced to today's game.  The classes that are not revamped suck, because they are balanced to the previous game.  Since this is a cycle that repeats, there will always be a set of classes that are ahead of the curve (hunters) and a set of classes that are behind the curve (priests).  Once each group gets it's most recent revamp, that group will be more powerful than the rest.  Mudflation at it's finest.

[Righ]

4 second instant cast 41 yard snare + 3 second cast 41 yard major nuke + instant cast 41 yard major aoe dd nuke and/or instant cast 41 yard single target nuke == 4.5 secs till death.  Though you are right, I do have a good .5 seconds to get close enough to cast one of my instant casts on them..

You're over-reaching here. The snare is a 50% movement speed debuff rather than a root, so you shouln't be dicking around at 41 yards all day. If you can't close to nuking range in the time it takes to cast aimed shot, you're probably watching TV or something else that's largely not the hunter's doing. Multi is neither a true instant cast nor a true area of effect. It's a shot that requires the hunter not be moving, unlike a true instant cast spell, and it affects up to three targets in close proximity in a given direction. The only instant that a hunter has is arcane shot, which is feeble, the only AoE is volley, which is equally feeble.

However, you're correct in that if a hunter attacks a clothie at range and gets the first shot in, the prognosis is generally not good for the clothie if they can't quaff a potion, heal or whatnot to buy enough survival time to close range. This is however, not the hunter's strength, but their only viable tactic. Exploit it.

EDIT:  I think the real problem is itemization.

This is what I've been arguing for what seems like months now.

[cevik]

EDIT:  I think the real problem is itemization.

This is what I've been arguing for what seems like months now.

Yeah, I came back to add another edit that said "I realize you are all going to say 'no shit, retard'", but you beat me to the punch! :)

[Ironwood]

That was really my point right at the start about Rogues.  We were balanced and had great talents and abilites, but because of that we were left alone for all these patches and, as a result, we're now not so happy.

And why the fuck do all our abilities miss or get parried ?  Seriously ?

How do you parry blind.

CRY.

[Righ]

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.