My own priorities:

1) Mortal Shots:
This 16 - 20 points MM talent is vital for all builds which forces every hunter who wants to perform well to take at least 20 MM talents. Most other classes have had vital talents like this either moved up the tree or turned into a skill. I would like something to be done for hunters so that BM's and SV's have more options available to them.

2) Master Tactician:
Alas this talent is pretty much a waste of 5 talent points. The proc rate is low and the benefit is negligible when Survival hunters have to max out their crit rating anyway. This then means that Readiness is a talent, although fairly useful, that is rarely taken. As a solution, Master Tactician could be changed so that instead of boosting crit by 2, 4, 6, 8, 10% for 8 seconds on a 6% ranged hit, it could perhaps proc from crits giving some other benefit, e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% mana regen while casting for 8 seconds.

3) Pathfinding:
A talent I really feel needs reviewing. To make this ability useful rather than increasing the speed gain from aspect perhaps it should give a 50, 100% chance to avoid being dazed. However for 2 talent points i feel this would be too potent, so perhaps it should become a 3 talent 33, 66, 100% chance to avoid being dazed. The run speed bonus is still less than druids in cheetah form or shaman in wolf form by 10% so I dont believe this would be a talent with OP issues.


Additional major bug since 2.3:
Pets pathing is screwed up when on a ramp. There are two immediate examples where you can test this and see the problem first hand. In Karazhan when on a ramp fighting mobs above you, if you send your pet in it runs back down the ramp and continues as far down through Karazhan as it can. In Slave pens when fighting mobs on the ramps the same thing happens, your pet runs away from the mob and keeps on going. Prior to 2.3 pets had no trouble running up the ramps to engage targets so I can only assume this is related to the pet trying to get behind the target.

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Q u o t e:
Strongmint: In my view multiple tier sets would be a mistake. We have one raid role, to DPS. The classes with multiple sets have them to fulfill different raid roles so they can play their charactors the way they wish. I dont want to be forever locked in to one parrticular DPS spec because my gear is limited that way.

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As said in the original post, the current gear only suits MM hunters really well and to a slightly lesser degree BM hunters. Survival hunters have quite different optimal stat requirements than the other two which need to be reflected in alternative gear. Also as mentioned BM hunters would benefit from more gear aimed at improving DPS and survivability of their pets. One way this can be achieved is by providing alternative gear options for tiers.

Solution Without Different Sets
There is a possible solution that wouldn't require different sets. Quite simply make hunter sets have far more gem options than normal and reduce the core stats on each item. It would also be beneficial to add some gems that would directly benefit hunter pets (also would apply to warlock pets), for example by specifically boosting pet DPS by a fixed ammount or percentage. Other new gems could include stats that apply to both the hunter and the pet. Perhaps a metagem to boost the power of e.g. Spirit Bond. Anyway using much more customisable gear would potentially solve the issue of stat optimisations.

I was so happy about finally seeing a blue post in this thread, but that was quickly removed. I thought we would finally get some feedback from YOU.

How do you think about all of these suggestions? How do you feel about the hunter class, and the way its going? Do you think hunters are viable in all aspects of the game? Have you played a hunter in all aspects of the game?

Whats the future?

More importantly, is he in any position to divulge such information to us, or will we have to wait for someone else to post it? :)

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Q u o t e:
I was so happy about finally seeing a blue post in this thread, but that was quickly removed. I thought we would finally get some feedback from YOU.

How do you think about all of these suggestions? How do you feel about the hunter class, and the way its going? Do you think hunters are viable in all aspects of the game? Have you played a hunter in all aspects of the game?

Whats the future?

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Bear in mind that the forum moderator is not the same as the developer. What the forum mods think has no relation to the thought of the devs. However I think most of the suggestions and comments here are spot on. Lets just hope that the mods are able to forward them to the appropriate devs. I must admit I'm always dubious that us EU players get the same consideration that US forum posts do, but then that's just me.

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Q u o t e:


Sorry, but what have you been smokin' mate? :) It's mainly used for pvp in 5v5 and 3v3 I guess... Since hunter is actually DPS class with probably worst CC, another good dps tree wouldn't be bad.

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May I contend that? With not much practise and possibly a few points in survival for the longer freezing trap duration, Hunters can make alright CC. All you need to do is lay a trap down in advance and just keep putting another down when the CD is up.

It's certainly worked out for me at least.

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Q u o t e:
More about 1: It's too easy levelling a hunter, knowing nothing but pet attack, serpent sting and arcane shot. Hence, hunters get popular and abundant because they are sooo easy and relaxing to solo with, even for little kids.
Trouble is that 15-20% of most server populations are now hunters, and at the same time noone actully needs hunters at all. There is not much we can do in a group that someone else can't do just as well, and hunters are notorious for making mistakes, causing vipes, ninja'ing etc.etc.... Basically because many of us never get good group-experince for the above reasons. So of course we are bound to make mistakes when we finally get the chance...

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Ugh. /agree
I had the misfortune of grouping with one of those kinda guys while I was tanking SL with my Druids. When asked to help with the CC by freezing a mob to get it out of the way he put the snare on and forgot to turn off Aspect of the Pack while tanking Vorpil. Most annoying since it was people like him that mean that I can only really get dungeon groups with my guild (and the fact that we rarely have more than 6-7 on in a day... most annoying as I said).

Anyway, they should make a quest in hunter skills a requisite for progressing past a point. Like that one to get Rhok'Delar but everyone has to do it.

Another thing I think the raiding hunters would welcome is the ability to respecc their pets without the need to visit the pet trainer. I mean, take Tempest Keep for example: on Al'ar you need to gear your pet towards fire resistance but nextdoor you have Void Reaver which requires arcane resistance. Now, if you want your pet to even have a chance of surviving with heals you need to change your pet's resistances. And asking 20+ people to wait while you go to a major city on Azeroth, retrain your pet, get summoned is not a good thing to do.

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Q u o t e:
Another thing I think the raiding hunters would welcome is the ability to respecc their pets without the need to visit the pet trainer. I mean, take Tempest Keep for example: on Al'ar you need to gear your pet towards fire resistance but nextdoor you have Void Reaver which requires arcane resistance. Now, if you want your pet to even have a chance of surviving with heals you need to change your pet's resistances. And asking 20+ people to wait while you go to a major city on Azeroth, retrain your pet, get summoned is not a good thing to do.

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Yes and no; you already know what kind of AOE damage will be dealt in a certain raid; you can quite easily slap on both the resistances at relatively decentvalues, at the expense of stamina. My pet usually survives through the whole instance, unless Al'ar decides to fall on it and melee it.

"The biggest pain of picking a pet is the pets’ level."

Indeed, and what i would love to see is the Pet Trainer have a option of "leveling" your pet up to your level, maybe for a small price.

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Q u o t e:
"The biggest pain of picking a pet is the pets’ level."

Indeed, and what i would love to see is the Pet Trainer have a option of "leveling" your pet up to your level, maybe for a small price.

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I wouldn't even mind if it actually took a few days to do it while stabled.

The arrow cost concern could be eased by increasing stacks from 200 to 250 whilst keeping the price the same.

Very nice ideas here.

My top priority atm would be about pet scaling compared to some stats, such as crit and resilience.
I think that pets shouldnt only receive scaling from ap and stam but also from crit and resilience.

I would like to add that i think the changes in 2,3 were awesome for hunters, the removal of the deadzone has increased the fun factor alot for me (i hated the idea of not being able to fire when he was out of close combat).

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Q u o t e:
My top priority atm would be about pet scaling compared to some stats, such as crit and resilience.
I think that pets shouldnt only receive scaling from ap and stam but also from crit and resilience.

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This would indeed be good. A more comprehensive scaling based on various useful stats would be much better than simply AP, Resists and stamina. It would also help survival specced hunters who put more emphasis on Agility than AP than MM or BM do.

My top 3. I've only done limited PvP with this character, so wouldn't say that my views are representative of current issues.

PvE
1) Hunter Ammo - far too costly and require me to sacrifice a whole bag slot.
2) Pet Threat Generation - don't seem to have enough
3) +int kit - I have to sacrifice nice +damage type kit, just to keep my mana pool large enough

Now explaining in more detail:
1) From level 1, Hunters have had penalties on them. We have to sacrifice a whole bag slot for our ammo and have to buy the stuff to boot which eats majorly into our funds (along with feeding our pet). One thing I would be after is to add a pouch slot next to the paper doll slot to free up the space for an additional bag.
Going on from this, if ammo were changed to be the same as throwing weapons, then allow the ammo pouch to take special ammo types, obtained from quests/rep vendors/engineers. e.g. 'ammo increases Arcane Shot by +50 damage' or 'all auto-shots cause 50% of damage as fire damage', obviously stacks of these special ammo types that would reduce like normal ammo currently does. Would allow for greater variety of playstyle and make engineer ammo more worth while.

2) OK, as a BM Hunter, I'd expect my pet to hold aggro for a while, before the mob comes after me. If I get two auto-shot crits going off in the first few moments of combat, or the mob resists a growl, my pet looses aggro far too easily. This becomes even more apparent when you learn the next set of skills. Increasing threat generation wouldn't be game breaking.

3) I accept that I'm a dps class, but find myself frequently not taking up quest rewards because I would end up loosing a huge chunk of mana, the fact that we are classed a 'caster' is quite illogical. Also as a leatherworker, the recipes available at the lower rep levels in the Outlands seem to be aimed towards Shaman and Leather wearers, rather than Hunters - Kuenari, Cenarion Expedition to name two examples of this.

Overall, I think that hunters are a great class to play, its just odd niggly things that I've noticed. Also can we have /pet on our pet generate happyness? A channelled spell that have more benefit if somebody else does it would be quite cool :p

in PVE:

1. Raid spec Viability
2. Pets (Leveling / Growl scaling / Viability between families)
3. Costs.

and in more in-depth:
1.
Atm raidleader has basicly zero reason to take hunter in raid unless he is either BM or Survival. BM will give huge dps boost to "caster group" same time getting nice manaregen. Survival boosts Melee and other hunters.

Maybe switch Silencing shot and TSA in MM talent tree and replace TSA with ability to make your Aspects to Auras? (ofc 8% dodge is far too much, but maybe we can nerf it ;) AotH would replace directly TSA and Viper would give manaregen to whole group)

2.
I can't get Boar as pet, because it would take 4 months to get to level 70 with my current available playtime.

Pets keeping aggro is issue. Why it scales based on AP instead of paperdoll dps for example?

Few pet families are far superior dps-wise compared to anothers, which kinda forces me to use pet which I personally don't prefer.

3.
General costs of raiding as hunter are kinda excessive, Ammo+Food+Mana potions+Elixirs/Flasks cost loads of money. Most irritating this becomes when your raidgroup reaches "Next level" and previous content becomes farmable. All except tanks and hunters can do pure "cash runs" with only cost of reagents. Tanks will allways get somekind repairbill and hunters pay loads of Ammo and manapots (Unless you are BM and grouped with Shadow Priest)

Awesome posts. I salute you, Schwick.

I'll have to go more in depth through the feedback. You can however now remove the concern about double trapping, since it is coming back. Nice to see Blizzard is listening but odd that they removed it first.

My biggest concerns currently would be mana management, the diversity of pet abilities (especially since new abilities seem to be ready if you trust the databases) and the rate of pet levelling.

We'll see how 2.3.2 modifies Aspect of the Viper, thus issues with mana. In that regard, Thrill of the Hunt could be modified to grant mana on autoshot, based on damage dealt. It would mean all shots would be affected instead of only the ones that both crit AND use mana.

My second priorities would be pet scaling, especially the scaling of Growl. It doesn't prevent me from killing what I want of course. It is however a real annoyance, as a Survival hunter, to see the mob go for me after two or three white shots and my pet incapable of pulling it back.
As an alternate solution to those already proposed, I submit the idea of having a hunters' Tome of Growl drop off of mobs in Karazhan and up, which will allow us to teach Fluffy new ranks of the skill.
As the other tomes for druids, mages or priests, this should be a consumable that isn't BOP.
Probably an easier solution to implement, yet scaling in crit and hit rating is well needed too.

I saw the raiding costs mentionned. My working schedule prevents me from raiding more than twice a week, so it is very manageable. For those that don't have this issue, I see it as a huge dent in the budget indeed.
In addition to the suggestions already made, some mobs could drop ammunition. I'm specifically thinking about the troll marksmen in Zul'Aman, for which it would be a logical drop.

Even for me, switching from Cenarion to Mysterious arrows is a significant increase in the spendings.



I may add more. Keep up the great work.

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Q u o t e:
Steady Shot (priority 4)
While this spell is fine, lowering the casting speed would help more with shot rotation (see “Misc”). Besides that, letting this ability be affected by bullets would help with the overall DPS.

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Due to GCD, I don't think reducing the casting time would make that much of a difference. But reducing the GCD from 1½ seconds to 1 or something would make shot rotations so much, much easier, while also solving the whole haste effect problem where haste actuly reduces your dps when reaching a certain point.

Making Quiver, Quick Shots talent or Rapid Fire reducing the GCD when used like Blood Lust does could also be a possible solution to this problem without making to many other caster classes whine.