PTR gets me thinking about the future of hunters...

[Quiv]

I edited my OP to point out my thoughts were just examples of how to make the specs feel different from one another while still staying tied into their theme. They arent suggestions of what I want Blizzard to do. Picking apart my examples, the pros and cons, is fine but misses the point. How would you make the specs feel fundamentally different while staying true to the spec's theme? The specs feeling so similar is the conundrum I am curious how will be addressed, presumably in next xpac.

The BM two beast thing is a neat idea too. Not sure how practical in terms of balance, though, but thematically it would look cool.

[Lisaara]

Personally, no offense to anyone, the responses going "I'd quit the game if this happened!" is a bit overdramatic for my tastes. I get you wouldn't want it but I think that should be voiced without the dramatics. That'd be like me saying I'd quit the game if Mistwalker Monks no longer used yu-lon to heal but Chi-ji instead.

[Sukurachi]

Personally, no offense to anyone, the responses going "I'd quit the game if this happened!" is a bit overdramatic for my tastes. I get you wouldn't want it but I think that should be voiced without the dramatics. That'd be like me saying I'd quit the game if Mistwalker Monks no longer used yu-lon to heal but Chi-ji instead.

I'm sorry, if they suddenly made BM hunters - the only hunter spec that can tame spirit beasts - a "melée" class, I would quit. I don't like playing up-close-and-personal classes. it's not for nothing that I have multiple hunters but very very few of any other class than a few casters.

Your Monk comparison is flawed. Instead, it would be like saying Holy priests will suddenly be tanks.

it's not "dramatics", as you so indelicately word it, to say that the game would lose all interest for me if they changed the very nature of the class which attracted me to WoW in the first place. I switched from FF:XI to WoW because of Hunter.

So yeah, I'd quit if my hunter spec suddenly became a melée spec, regardless of your opinion on this.

You can say "no offence to anyone" all you want. if you have to start by saying it, then it's because you know full well that you WILL be offending people.

[Azunara]

How about everyone take a step back and calm down. The thread is starting to get a tad bit aggressive, when we all need to remember this is only a thread for theorycrafting. There is nothing saying one way or another. If you don't like an idea, that's perfectly alright--because it may not even happen! Everyone's opinion is their own. If someone would quit the game because their class was completely changed, that's alright. If someone wants to stick to WoW and their class until the bitter end, also okay. Everyone is valid and there's no reason to be so aggressive on either side.

[Snowwalker]

Now... Play nice everyone. Let's remember this IS an opinion topic, and not everyone is going to agree with everything and, will have their own ideas here. Let's keep this to more the theme it was intended and make it more "My idea to make the specs different would be..."

Let's not call anyone names or belittle anyone here. This is supposed to be just a 'for fun' thread. Not anything in blue.

[cowmuflage]

You can say "no offence to anyone" all you want. if you have to start by saying it, then it's because you know full well that you WILL be offending people.

It's just like saying "I'm not *phobic* I just don't like *insert topic here"

[Shade]

I didn't see any name calling or such, but maybe I wasn't reading close enough. Unless my PvP comment was name calling but I didn't really think of or intend it that way. As to my comment about quitting if they changed BM to be a melee spec, that was just pure truth, my feelings on the matter.

... Anyways. I'm jumping mostly into the BM discussion as I do not really know MM/SV that well, its been years since I've played either spec.

I can't see either option being successful with the BM ideas and I do not think that they would do such a complete overhaul of a class. The melee would make far too many hunters upset, besides hunters are the only ranger-type characters in the game. I can't see them going suddenly melee without allowing another class to have ranged weapons again. They are the only non magic ranged group, and taking the ranged weapon from one hunter spec spec would lessen the number of non magic ranged specs available in game down to two then. It would be more unbalanced I think then balanced.

I do not think that hunters can be more individualized then they already are as they are the only ranged, non-magic class in the game. Perhaps buffing the traps for survival, making marksman have more shots and BM more specialized beasts with different abilities or such, but it would be really difficult to balance out and keep everyone-hunters and non hunters-happy with it.

Truly what they need to do, in my opinion, is add another ranged type class entirely.

Melee: warrior, pally, kitty/bear druid, rogue, dk, enhance shaman, monk=about 16 melee specs in the game if you count each melee type spec within those classes, including tanking specs.
Ranged: mage, ele shammy, shadow priest, boomkin, hunter, lock=about 12 ranged specs in the game
Healer: priest, druid, shammy, monk, pally=about 6 healing specs

Rough numbers, I'm not positive on all of them but the trend is visible.

I would ask that they do a new range NON MAGIC dps/healing class instead of doing a total overhaul on the hunters. Hunter specs do not feel specialized right now, I agree to an extent-though having my exotics on my BM is enough for me, but I think there are other things I'd rather see then them making drastic changes to the hunters next expac.

[Wain]

What Azunara said. There haven't been that many dramatics on this thread, so hopefully that little spat was just a minor slip

Other than that, this is a pretty worthwhile thread. I'm crap at theorycrafting but I'll leave you to it

[Slapperfish]

If they made BM a melee class, we would have one hell of a time trying to tame Deth'tilac and the three Spirit Porcupines.

[Nevish]

Blizzard has said numerous times that they don't want hunters to become a melee class. That's part of the reason why we had such a severe overhaul in Cataclysm: to remove any sense of the idea that we could effectively melee. Anything following that can be attributed to the ageless problem of the hunter class: that the devs only work by the barest guidelines of what they want to do with us, which turns into "Well I dunno, GC, let's just throw more sparkle dogs at them.'

As much as I love punching things in the face, it'd be wrong to see my hunter to do it, or depend solely on her pet to get it done while she sits back with a martini.

[Quiv]

If they made BM a melee class, we would have one hell of a time trying to tame Deth'tilac and the three Spirit Porcupines.

This is a point I had never considered. Deth can be tamed as other specs since its a normal spider though. However Spirit Beasts require BM and nobody going toe to toe with Degu.

[Lisaara]

If they made BM a melee class, we would have one hell of a time trying to tame Deth'tilac and the three Spirit Porcupines.

Deth wouldn't be an issue due to him being able to be tamed in other specs.

Porkies however...yeeeah. I forgot about them guys.

[Wereraptor]

They could make throwing weps and adding some new ones like throwing spears and such for hunters for one of the spec. And skills for them of course.

[Funk]

Okay. So this isn't a suggestion really, just me trying to have fun and think of an ability that could be somewhat realistic.

I have an idea for a Survival ability. I couldn't think of BM or MM counterparts since I don't play those specs so much, but this ability is conceived with the idea that BM and MM would have some juicy abilities to use also.

Right now I'm just calling it "BEES" because I'm bad at naming stuff.

So this goes in line with SV being about animal venom, sorta. Keep in mind it's not meant to be biologically accurate, just a vague reference to nature.

BEES would be a ranged ability which coats a friendly target (ie. player or pet.. or even the hunter himself/herself) in the pheromones of a Hive Queen, summoning a swarm of bees for 10 seconds that sting up to 10 enemies in melee range of the target, infecting them with some kind of instant damage and nature-type DoT that I also can't think of a name for.

Mechanics-wise and graphics-wise I was thinking it would be similar to unholy blight (a DK talent), except for another part which I will explain now.

I was also thinking the DoT could stack so that the damage is comparable one enemy as it is for ten enemies. So if you used the ability on a tank with only one enemy in melee range the bees would sting the enemy once every second for 10 seconds, applying ten stacks of the dot. This part I'm kinda iffy about cause it almost seems like it would make the ability too good, but then again it doesn't need to to heaps of damage. One enemy wouldn't get stung more than once every second, so the ten "charges" (ie. stings) would get used up instantly if 10+ enemy were in melee range of the friendly target, but would not be used up instantly if less than 10 enemies were present. This would actually make it best on 1 target since each sting would refresh the duration of the dot, but because I wasn't thinking of it doing heaps of damage I'd imagine using it as an AoE ability shouldn't be a terrible idea if you needed AoE. IDK just an idea.

I was also thinking there could be a minor glyph that adds another component to the ability which increases threat generation for tank-specced players and pets (ie. tenacity pets) for the duration of the swarm (10 seconds) to add some utility to the ability and make it aight for solo-ing stuff.

Also I have no idea what kind of duration the DoT would have (I figured it wouldn't last very long) or how much damage it would do or how long the cooldown would be, I just want BEES.



Also, I pictured this as SV rather than BM because they aren't true beasts (in the sense that they are target-able mobs) along with the fact that we aren't really summoning them ourselves but rather, manipulating them into attacking our enemies.

Actually since I'm not a raider I'd be interested to hear thoughts from a raiding PoV.

[Danielfboone]

Okay. So this isn't a suggestion really, just me trying to have fun and think of an ability that could be somewhat realistic.

I have an idea for a Survival ability. I couldn't think of BM or MM counterparts since I don't play those specs so much, but this ability is conceived with the idea that BM and MM would have some juicy abilities to use also.

Right now I'm just calling it "BEES" because I'm bad at naming stuff.

So this goes in line with SV being about animal venom, sorta. Keep in mind it's not meant to be biologically accurate, just a vague reference to nature.

BEES would be a ranged ability which coats a friendly target (ie. player or pet.. or even the hunter himself/herself) in the pheromones of a Hive Queen, summoning a swarm of bees for 10 seconds that sting up to 10 enemies in melee range of the target, infecting them with some kind of instant damage and nature-type DoT that I also can't think of a name for.

Mechanics-wise and graphics-wise I was thinking it would be similar to unholy blight (a DK talent), except for another part which I will explain now.

I was also thinking the DoT could stack so that the damage is comparable one enemy as it is for ten enemies. So if you used the ability on a tank with only one enemy in melee range the bees would sting the enemy once every second for 10 seconds, applying ten stacks of the dot. This part I'm kinda iffy about cause it almost seems like it would make the ability too good, but then again it doesn't need to to heaps of damage. One enemy wouldn't get stung more than once every second, so the ten "charges" (ie. stings) would get used up instantly if 10+ enemy were in melee range of the friendly target, but would not be used up instantly if less than 10 enemies were present. This would actually make it best on 1 target since each sting would refresh the duration of the dot, but because I wasn't thinking of it doing heaps of damage I'd imagine using it as an AoE ability shouldn't be a terrible idea if you needed AoE. IDK just an idea.

I was also thinking there could be a minor glyph that adds another component to the ability which increases threat generation for tank-specced players and pets (ie. tenacity pets) for the duration of the swarm (10 seconds) to add some utility to the ability and make it aight for solo-ing stuff.

Also I have no idea what kind of duration the DoT would have (I figured it wouldn't last very long) or how much damage it would do or how long the cooldown would be, I just want BEES.



Also, I pictured this as SV rather than BM because they aren't true beasts (in the sense that they are target-able mobs) along with the fact that we aren't really summoning them ourselves but rather, manipulating them into attacking our enemies.

Actually since I'm not a raider I'd be interested to hear thoughts from a raiding PoV.

As a Hunter of any spec, why would you want an ability that only works in melee range? I could see putting it on the pet but not the Hunter himself except maybe for PvP when you get jumped by a melee class. Even then, you're usually stun locked and can't do anything anyway.

[Quiv]

Maybe it could be like the Death Knight's symbiosis ability Plague Mushroom, except we throw a hive trap or something. Thematically, I think it would be neat!

[Nevish]

The idea of lobbing live wasp nests at the heads of my enemies pleases me greatly.

[cowmuflage]

[Quiv]

Another thing that I think a lot about is the idea of the "focus dump." GC recently tweeted about it and hunters: Greg Street ‏@Ghostcrawler @Shield_420 Having different focus dumps would help with spec distinction. (source)

I'm no game designer nor do I pretend to be. However, making another shot that costs X focus and does Y damage and named "______ shot", to me, is not going to make the specs distinct.

To me, what would make the specs distinct is to change up how the "focus dump" works. The idea of a "dump" applies to several specs in the game, and I understand its necessity. You are going to need to bleed off excess resource. However why does it have to be so boring as "______ shot"?

I understand dump shots are just filler moves, but fillers are often a means to an end of a bigger move. The main purpose they serve is to keep us from capping a resource. However filler moves don't have to be boring, even dump fillers. Think about Retribution. Crusader strike, Judgement, Exorcism all have their variance, but their main purpose is to build up Holy Power. It build anticipation that when you get 3 holy power, you get your nuke. Even steady/cobra shot are cast for an anticipated purpose, to use another shot. However arcane shot, the filler dump shot, is completely... boring.

I think the problem lies in the fact a dump shot is so desperately needed. What if we had a buff we had to maintain with focus, similar to Inquisition? Or maybe a nuke like Templar's Verdict? Even a shot that works like a Warrior Execute, translating excess focus into damage. What about the Windwalker buff Tiger Power? Even the idea of how Death Knight resource talents work with dumps, having a chance to refresh a depleted rune. Maybe some sort of debuff on the target maintained by the "dump" shot. All this could be possible if the need to dump is minimized, so that actually using the dump shot feels meaningful.

The problem with this is causing rotations to get weird. If they introduced a Templar's Verdict to hunters, its a chance the rotation would become "Steady/Cobra shot x4, Templar's Verdict shot." Same with Warrior Execute type dump, that would use excess focus for more damage. Maybe something like the Warrior Taste for Blood or Blood DK Scent of Blood, where the hunters dump shot could stack a buff that makes another shot stronger. We don't want wonky rotations because of this. However, seems to me this is an opportunity to change a boring shot mechanic (a boring shot) into something with a little flavor, or at least a little anticipation of something greater.

[Makoes]

I think Arcane shot as a dump would be more interesting if it had a more exciting graphic...