The best blue quote of the day

[meunkin]

wow this is probably the most ridiculous post I've ever read on petopia

and screw if we manage to be top tier dps for only about 3 months, dks is top dps since woltk. We were quickly nerfed after that and never got back since.

we have the LOWEST representation in top tiers rbgs and arenas; only 1%. Who care if the element is just a SHINY DISTRACTION if the pvp is broken.

I realize that, when you really want to feel a particular way, hearing a really solid counter-argument can make you feel angry, because you no longer feel like your original emotions were justified. Realize that the emotions you're feeling are justified, and I'm not saying that they aren't, you may absolutely feel like you are weak in pvp. Your facts, however, are incorrect.

Current logs on both AJ and WOL show hunters to be in the top tiers of DPS, and well-represented in arenas and RBGs. These are factual logs of data, not made up numbers, and are also not intended to make you feel bad, but to dispel some ignorance. You can't dismiss data just because it's not what you want it to be in order to enact change for your class, but you can post about how YOU feel and what changes you'd like to see to make playing the game easier and more fun for YOU.

If you want to make a good argument:
1) Drop the fake facts. Hunters are beating DKs on many fights in Firelands, and are just as well-represented in Arenas after the frost DK nerf. This is factual data, you can't argue with it, making up your own data will cause people to dismiss your arguments very quickly, because it usually means that the argue-er doesn't have any *good* points to make.
2) Drop the attitude. You're calling other players out for being oblivious to pvp concerns on a pet website. This isn't the place, take it to AJ. Having a bad attitude and putting others down makes people much less likely to want to listen to or agree with you.

And most importantly!
3) Focus on your experience. YOU sound like you aren't having fun. Why is that?

For example, I thought your comment about spell pen. was justified. Why should hunters have to get any spell pen? It's not obvious that you need it, and it probably hurts new hunters trying to get into the game. The way you stated it, though, was as if someone had personally killed your dog. I realize PvP in WoW can be an emotional thing, but the less of that emotion you bring to the conversation, the more convincing your arguments will ultimately be.

[Kalliope]

YOu never pvp have you? kill command can be silenced. It's not about preferred playstyle if our pvp is broken.

I'm on a PvP server, hon.

Forgive me for not crying over KC and traps being blocked by silences. We have more tools to use than that.

If you're having trouble in PvP because your KC can be silenced, then perhaps you're doing it wrong and hunters are in fact fine after all.

[pop]

eh It's not about emotion meunkin and Kalliope I was in pvp server too, don't worry I pwn a lot of faces as hunter. Jeez I have 3 level 85 hunters

bad attitude? puhlease I merely pointing out what is actually happening.

Yeah it is frustrating to pvp as a hunter, sorry is my venting seems outta line

[Vailent]

Hm.. this is a well informed thread. meunkin you sound (or write) like a fairly experienced hunter, which is always nice to see.

I was wondering, could you maybe link the source of these statistical facts you're talking about?

I ask because from what I've read, and seen, hunters in general have issues that need addressing. No, not buffs of course, but fixes yes, we need plenty of those in my opinion. Disengage going into cd without doing anything (most notably on hills). Random hunters coming along to steal the tame on Deth'tilac after you have gotten him down to 30% (etc) without the random hunter even having aggro.

I could go on and on about hunter mechanic problems, I mean mechanic issues are what half the threads on the wow hunter forums seem dedicated toward... that said I find it difficult to believe an average hunter could preform on par with a less broken class.

[meunkin]

Links in my previous post, one page back

The things you're talking about aren't necessarily class issues, more game issues/bugs/things that aren't fun, and worth mentioning as they often get less chatter than class issues of DPS, gap-closers, etc.

Disengage has had the same issues Blink has had, and continues to have, due to what I would surmise is the game's pathfinder code (how players move across the ground). Often mages will blink and go nowhere, or sometimes blink and go under the ground to fall to their deaths This has been an issue since Classic, and I'm not sure if it's a solvable one at this point. Just recently, Vanish was fixed, after having issues since way back in WoW beta. In software development, some issues just don't have an easy answer!

Taming issues are simply a part of WoW that hasn't gotten love since...well forever. Small steps have been made, e.g. making Deth and the like un-DS/tauntable, which was a recent hotfix. I don't think the fix is in tame beast itself, though, but in the philosophy behind rares and tameables. There is some gameplay in making hunters fight over rares. It makes them more rare, it makes rare-stealing a thing to do in the game. Is it fun content? I think you could argue that it is for some people, but maybe not the majority of players that are out looking for a new kitty. Personally, I'd rather if unique pets weren't rares, but were hard to find and hard to tame, and had a quick respawn timer. Put the challenge in the tame itself, rather than the camping/griefing.

I do think you are exactly right in that hunters are fairly complex. They have a lot of buttons and some major downsides, but when played well, can absolutely destroy players. My question to you would be: is it ok for WoW to have some classes that are easy to learn, but hard to master, and others that are hard to learn, and harder to master? Does this do good or bad things for the game as a whole? What about for new players that just picked a class based on the description shown to them when they're first starting? These are some of the questions I can imagine the development team is wrestling with.

[pop]

The hunter class is designed to make the learning curve easier but making the skill cap as very high is just plain ridiculous.

I think blizz really need to sit down with pvp hunter to at least know what fix or buff that would actually improve hunter's end game pvp and not just by making hunters op

The focus change for instance was give probably not very much attention. It is probably one of the most biggest mechanic change yet it is still require a lot enhancement to make it better.

[Kalliope]

I actually like how focus works better than energy does. We can regenerate our focus at will, whereas rogues have to use cooldowns and ferals....cry. That to me says that Blizzard spent time making focus more controlled and efficient than energy.

I'm not getting the hate for endgame hunter PvP. What comp are you running that isn't working out for you? What's your rating? Arena changes greatly as you climb the ladder, so the experience differs. If you're doing rated bgs, then you should be fine, since hunters are fantastic there.

[Vailent]

My question to you would be: is it ok for WoW to have some classes that are easy to learn, but hard to master, and others that are hard to learn, and harder to master? Does this do good or bad things for the game as a whole? What about for new players that just picked a class based on the description shown to them when they're first starting? These are some of the questions I can imagine the development team is wrestling with.

Easy to learn, yet hard to master seems like it should fit the hunter class nicely.

However, when I first decided on making a hunter back in early 2005 (previously played a priest and druid), I asked the realm I was on, Laughing Skull, "what is the worst class in the game at the moment?" I received roughly a dozen replies, all of which were "Hunter." Why? Because they were incredibly broken (about as much as they are now...) several used the example of Lacerate being the 31st talent point in the survival tree.

The greater the challenge, the greater the reward is what I thought. Easy to learn, yet hard to master... I agree that is a nice concept. The trouble is, it is a mask... The class SHOULD be easy to learn, but it is not, due to so many mistakes blizzard has made. The worst of all is the damage hunters can do simply by back peddling in a bg at early levels. This does not teach anyone how to play, it simply hinders them at level cap when their damage dealing ability drops off... i cant count the number of hunters I have seen that cannot even strafe let alone jump, turn, and shoot.

New players will think, "wow this class is easy." and then once they progress to level 80 will be at a loss for why they are doing so badly. Or even worse, they decide to play another class after only a few levels, leading them to the belief that hunters are fine! buff mages!

As for whether or not this is a bad thing... Bad does not begin to describe the cesspool of madness that hunters find themselves in.

While a bit rant-ish, I hope that adequately answered your question meunkin.

[Monica Gems]

yeah too bad employees not the developers.

[AdamSavage]

lol had a another GM use a copy and paste message. The funny part was that I put the ticket in about finding a bot @ 9:44 PM and @ 10:09 PM. Oh and I was online still when he replied.

I apologize for having missed you while you were online, and the long wait time.

[Sasrei]

Wow.. really? Hunters have been broken in pvp for a long time and its pretty much a well known fact. Our CCs well lets see, we have a trap that people can easily walk around with little issue of hitting it. Scatter shot is nice, wyvern sting is SS only. Silencing shot is MM only.

Disengage doesnt get us nearly as far away as it should, detterence ive had people kill me while it still showed it up because it apparently faded before hand but didnt let me know. With disengange a mage can just blink on me, lock uses portal, warrior can charge, DK can grip and I am pretty much screwed because I have to resort to being melee which means I am a dead hunter. Cause well my only source of getting way is on CD, and my only source of a speed boost would get me killed because well.. dontdazemebro. Oh wait I can see that rogue, flare! ... nothing.. seriously? trap down right behind me. Rogues saps me from slightly on the side of it. Casters can get silenced, but they have a ton of things that can help them survive, I hit detterence I cant do anything, not even lifeblood to regain health. Just run for the "5 seconds" to try and live because if they get to melee range im screwed. BM spec your pet dies.. run to rez or your screwed. They will wait for 9 seconds for you to rez right?

And really.. melee having to run to stop dps to prevent their deaths is worse then us? Yah range has to run which stops their dps to for mages/locks. Hunters have to stay ranged which really sucks when you have to stack. Or having to move constantly so that we can continue to do damage with how large bosses hit boxes are while other range can just sit and do continous dps. Lets not forget if your BM spec and your pet dies (lets face it no ammount of mend pet is going to help on certain attacks, and while I am trying to move out fo the way of things not really paying much attention to where my pet is at the time) you have to spend 9 seconds to revive your pet to actually do dps. 9 seconds is alot in a boss fight. Thats some crucial dps.

And in arena there are very few hunters in the high end and theres a reason for it.

So really.. hunter pvp is not fine. We have ways to survive yes, but we are gimped in so many other ways to.

[Kalliope]

I think the big issue here is not "hunters are broken in pvp," but "hunters take a good degree of skill to play WELL in pvp." This applies to other classes as well (have you seen some of these terrible melee who are easier to kite than they should be?), but is a big deal to hunters since there are so many of us and many hunters don't really know how to handle everything in the arena, where micromanagement is key.

Trust me, good hunters can control the hell out of a situation. The ones who have slower reflexes or don't do all the right things at the right times end up behind, getting controlled and killed. The state of hunters seems a lot worse than it is proportionally speaking because there are far more hunters that exist than hunters who play on that upper level.

TL;DR: just because you're not doing well at something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's broken; it just means it's an area you need to work on.

As for PvE and deadzoning, the devs have done a great job in cutting down on the number of fights that put us in those situations; about the only fight I can think of offhand that I get deadzoned on is the goblin boss in the Vanessa sequence of Deadmines - and that can be avoided entirely with the right positioning. So there are still exceptions; there will always be exceptions. There are far more fights that require melee to run great distances or that have AoE silences that catch casters no matter what they do than there are fights with deadzoning. And let's not forget air phases, where all melee can do is run around and survive rather than dpsing; we just cry about our pets.

Believe me, unless you've really played a melee or caster dps at endgame levels, it's hard to fully appreciate the quiet hells they have to go through on certain fights.

[AdamSavage]

A good hunter can be quite hard to kill. With the right pet and right talents, you can simply kite them and heal your self while doing it. I managed to take down a pally that way. He basically ran out of mana, however I can't figure out how to take out a healing shaman..They just refuse to die..

[Monica Gems]

How many hunters are in the top of the arena brckets, vs how many hunters are played in arena?

If 1 of 4 played are in the top, and 25 of 100 mages are in the top, then it's equal representation based on percentages. Let's go a step further; WHY ren't they represented? It's not that they aren't faceroll, it's that they are complex enough that it isn't worth the time it takes to get the hunter working proper in PvP; I can think of a lot of OHSNAP buttons on my mage, priest, shaman... but my hunter has fairly long CDs on her buttons, all, what, 3 of them?

It's not impossible to PvP well, but I'd question "PvP great" as relative to how well other classes can be PvP'd.

[Sasrei]

Pretty much what Monica said, not that I think hunters should be a face roll but theres alot less margin for error in pvp then any other class. Most of the arenas high end bracket you see rogues, mages, priests, druids. A lock every here and there, shammy, but barely any hunter whatsoever.

Plus in pvp.. people see a hunter, they go for the hunter, they dont care about the FC running past them, or the healer healing him. They want the hunter

[Kalliope]

Where are these numbers coming from, out of curiosity? I'm only seeing theoretical numbers without source links.

Hunters are still one of the top bg classes. That's why we get mobbed and focused down. We're a big threat.

[Morven]

I know that I regularly end up in the top 3-5 killers in the battleground, though I do die a lot.

People go after hunters for a few reasons in BGs; one is that we're dangerous if ignored, and two that we're really vulnerable and an easy kill if they do manage to get close. If we manage to take down a flag carrier in a flag-running BG, I and the other hunters are major contributions to that, for instance -- with concussive shot and silencing shot, as well as pretty huge burst damage.