Huntards and warriors
patch 2.3 November 20th, 2007A thought occurred to me the other day in battlegrounds.
In 2.3 hunters were given Mortal Strike and Purge on their arrows, and their “dead zone” was eliminated so that they can use their bows practically in melee range.
I must have missed the memo about hunters being 100% completely and utterly useless prior to 2.3
Imagine if blizzard had given warriors beast within as an 11 pt talent (tacked on to anger management perhaps?), made slam remove buffs, and gave us the ability to melee from up to 30 yards away.
That’s what hunters got in 2.3. Pretty freakin ridiculous.
Oh and as an aside, I’m feeling the indirect warrior nerf as a dwarf. Not only does stoneform not break blind anymore (its #1 use by FAR), blind now happens a lot more often with the shorter CD. Perception, shadowmeld, or escape artist would be a LOT more useful than stoneform now 
I guess I can always go hunt for treasure… sigh.
Veritas
November 20th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I’m with ya on this 100% on this man. Though I still have Will of the Forsaken, I feel the punch. You do have to consider the fact that the entire population of poeple who play the hunter class consists 75% of little kids who have no idea how the game works. That’s the reason for the huge amount of QQ about their mechanic in the game. I still stand behind “The Hunter is the easiest class in the game to play, but the hardest to find a person who knows what the fuck their doing.”
So, for stoneform…look at it like this……………..There’s always prot spec. D:
November 20th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Actually I look at it like this:
My NE priest racials got uber buffed.
My dwarf warrior racial got pwnd to compensate (its not as useless as shards used to be tho. Can still remove wound/crip poisons which is nice in 2v2, and uh… serpent sting and deep wounds?)
November 21st, 2007 at 12:15 am
QQ More, Aimed Shot is a 3 second cast, which makes it useless most of the time. Deadzone was utter crap, not only they have issues with LoS but also had to deal with deadzone. Hunters were the worst arena class prior to 2.3, they got buffs they deserved, I killed countless of them since the patch, move on, the sky is not falling…
November 21st, 2007 at 10:58 am
No deadzone is fine, MS on aimed shot is fine and purging arcane shot is almost to strong.
But what really bothers me is the fact that Beastmasters now got NO deadzone + beast within so every *”*% huntard can kite now (even the bad ones that were just free honor bevore and still should be because they are bad!)
November 21st, 2007 at 11:45 am
Yea, but that’s a problem with TBW, not deadzone.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I think you kinda missed the point. Pre-2.3 a hunter if left alone would kick the crap out of your team. It’s not like they were useless, they just suffer from the same problem as moonkins, elemental shamans, and smite priests (to a lesser extent mages). Once someone attacks you your usefulness drops drastically (because of pushback and needing to try and kite/move).
In 2.3 they were given 2 of the best abilities there are in the game and their #1 weakness was removed. That’s an enormous, enormous buff for any class.
Its a strange move from blizzard in my opinion, because they have always done buffs in extreme moderation. When prot warriors complained about trying to hold multiple mobs we got thunderclap in d-stance. No new skill, no consecrate or swipe (pre nerf), just a minor tweak to eliminate the need to stance dance.
As I suggested, the equivalent of this buff would be to give warriors beast within as an 11 pt talent (huntards got MS on an 11 pt talent), make slam remove buffs, and allow us to melee from 30yds (remove our “deadzone”).
The reason it’s not a huge deal for warriors is because in arenas hunters don’t attack us. My healer sure notices the difference being MS’d and having his buffs ripped off him with damage abilities from 40 yds away.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:16 pm
No, they didn’t suffer the same problem as [insert caster class/spec here], all ranged classes had to deal with LoS, Hunters were the only class that had to deal with LoS AND deadzone, that’s one thing. Another is that boomkins and smite priest are not really arena builds, neither are fury warriors and few other trees of few other classes, when comparing hunters to boomkins or smite priests you already confirm that hunters were broken prior to 2.3.
They got buffed huge, but they deserved that as they didn’t really have ANY role on arenas, except for dealing damage, but who doesn’t deal damage to begin with? And just because they got buffed to be on par with other classes doesn’t mean Blizzard have to balance all other classes, that would make hunters underpowered again after all. Warriors especially don’t need any buffs ATM, as we are still a solid and needed class that smash faces.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I would just point out that as a warrior, doing bg’s without a pocket healer is a friggin catastrophe, but I somehow doubt we’re ever going to get beast within ability tacked on to anger management.
Hunters sucked in arena and got not some small tweaks, not 1 major buff, but 3 incredible buffs.
Giving hunters mortal strike as an 11 point talent is huge. Don’t hold your breath for the day warriors (or any other class really) get some other classes 31 or 41 point class-defining talent as an 11-pointer.
And its 2.5s cast now, not 3. Which is hardly a problem, esp considering they can rip it from 35+yds. I’m not even sure hunters suffer pushback on those casts?
Overall I’m just saying this is an enormous and unprecedented buff to a class in a single patch. (Druids might have got one this big when bears were topping dps while MTing kara). As a warrior the main impact is someone else has MS now. Huntards didnt get more AC or more survivability, so yes if you hit one he will die just the same. But he’s doing far more terrible things to your healer than you are probably aware of.
That and blizzard is stupid.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I love the last sentence
November 21st, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I’m with Veritas on this one. The new mechanic is going to be incredible to those who know how to use it. Although, I still own many a hunter in PVP still…even as DW fury (no imp intercept ;_;)
November 21st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
i honestly havent noticed much difference in the way hunters operate in arenas, even with the buffs. Aimed / MS shot isn’t nearly as easy to keep up as MS and is impossible to work into a regular shot rotation, which any hunter will tell you is essential to doing dps as a hunter. So the debuff will be sporadically on and off (assuming no rogues / warrs), a fact which can be exploited by clever healers. No deadzone is a buff, but the gigantic majority of hunters in arenas use frost trap and scattershot (which has minimum range of 0) to deal with people who get too close or try to deadzone them. Basically, the buffs have made hunters easier to play, not overwhelmingly better in any arena setting.
The one exception to this is the arcane shot debuff. This does need nerfing, being the only damage ability with a dispel added on. The class most affected by this is shamans, by far. They have no buff protection and the only buff they have will be repeatedly dispelled, nor will grounding help save them from this as arcane shot is a physical attack. An easy way to do this would be make arcane shot cost more (150ish more mana would be fair) or have a percentage chance to dispel buffs (33%-50% would be ok, maybe more if talented).
November 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm
ok, i just realized i lied about the “only damaging dispel” … who could forget shield slam?
November 21st, 2007 at 7:47 pm
the class defining talents for hunters in arena are frost trap and viper sting, not aimed shot.
full merc hunters usually have only a little less hp than warrior (i.e a lot) and were never squishy to begin with.
you want OP hunters? make their traps physical and give them more mana regen.
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:40 am
it seems they can now use 2 traps simultaneously and they raised aspect of the viper effect. New daily blue from patch 2.3.2 O_o
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am
How can Anyone QQ about aimshot being a 3 secs cast?
have you ever played a mage!? and tried to use fireball???
so hunters need to stay still 3 secs to use that skill, any decent ranged class user can manage that.
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
no no…its 2,5s cast.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:57 am
I could think of worse things then hunters being buffed, they actually needed it imo. I am more worried about the buffs mages and priest are getting, classes i allready thought of as borderline overpowered before 2.3.
And oh you play a warrior on alliance side and you like to pvp? Go Gnome or go home :p
November 24th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Hunters had problems in arena, they added some abilities to make them more desirable. ARENA hasn’t changed much (at least for my battlegroup) for me. I’m glad they got the buff so hunters don’t have to reroll to get into teams (on the casual level). I’m sure top rated hunters are pretty close to op now.
November 26th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I should have probably been more clear in the original post, I was NOT arguing that hunters are now “overpowered”.
I was just musing on the size of the buff they got, which seemed pretty freakin incredible. Having played post 2.3 for a while, I could probably make the argument that it is indeed too much.
But it’s not OP versus warriors really. MS? We don’t heal ourselves very much. Dispelling buffs? Shouts are physical. No deadzone? We couldn’t hit them in their deadzone anyways.
As a warrior it’s no different really, but for your overall teams - esp your healers, its probably a very big difference.