What happened?

[SrJulie]

I have been absent from WoW for a long time. In fact I was going to delete my character and close my account and was told by my sister (who plays with me most of the time) to "lay down until the feeling goes away".

When I left earlier in the year Beastmaster Hunters where the tops of the charts. Shortly thereafter I felt like I had been buried under a ton of dingo dung and told to eat my way out by Blizzard. I probably would have stayed absent until cataclysm until my sister invited me to run Naxramus one day and I had never seen it (and always wanted to). It seems that Blizzard, as personified by Ghostwolf, was not intent to make hunters play marksman spec and survival spec, but bury the hunter class in general. I remember being so excited about the new exotic pets I almost wet myself when I saw all the new choices.

Still I looked for a spirit beast for so long, that when I recently found Gondria, just standing there, no one trying to hunt her down (I guess they were all after Arcturis) that I was determined to stay beast master after all.

So how exactly did Hunters seem to go from being the most beloved class in Wow to seeminly the most down trodden again? I was only gone for a larger part of the summer months. What happened?:

[Emowin]

Good question when you figure it out please let me in on the secret.

[Zangor]

Patch 3.1 happened and nerfed BM spec
since 3.2 its been improved but still not enough to make it really raid viable

[Ghanur]

Ghostcrawler hates hunters.

I got back to the game, because Blizzard offered a 7 day welcome-back for long time inactive accounts. The game changed, not for the better.

Maybe WoW II (AKA Cataclysm), will do somthing the right way, but I won't hold my breath.

Current state of the game:
- Pet UI broken (AKA Cower bug)
- Pet not scaling with equipment
- Pet pathing erratic
- Pet dancing with mobs through the whole zone, attracting every single mob (I ordered the pet to attack, not to dance around). This Bug was introduced way back, when Blizzard tried and failed to make pets "smarter".

Those are long standing issues...

[Orni]

I got back to the game, because Blizzard offered a 7 day welcome-back for long time inactive accounts.

Same here. However I do not play really active anymore. My main char (druid) sits in dalaran with all sets from T1 till T8 stuffed in his bank doing nothing. (sadly only one half of T3)

I'm gonna get my Hunter to max lvl next days and max mining/engineering with him. After this I'll go inactive till cataclysm. He got 2 heirloom daggers, the bow and the shoulders. I think he'll be perfectly ready to level to 85 then and get converted into a goblin Well ... then I'll only do PvP with him, since I'm done with PvE for my life ... I've raided since release.

- Pet dancing with mobs through the whole zone, attracting every single mob (I ordered the pet to attack, not to dance around). This Bug was introduced way back, when Blizzard tried and failed to make pets "smarter".

This is so aweful, ... I really hate this. Well, they are "smarter" sometimes since they pull the mob most times away from others but they still fail doing this often and it's really annoying running after your pet because it decided to do a dance through the zone.

[Ryno]

Yeah, it looks like Blizz isn't focusing on a lot if little issues with hunters.

For the most part, they try to keep PvE and PvP balanced, along with gear scaling and such.

Hopefully in Cataclysm they'll remake the hunter class, so to speak. With the whole "no mana just focus" deal for hunters. And the promise of taking out most "boost X stat" talents.