Greetings! Let's talk Revamp!

Hey all,

It’s your friendly-neighborhood-hunter-dev here to say ‘Hello’ and get the discussion going on the very exciting Revamp you’ve been hearing about.

What I’d like to get from you all are the top 3 things you’d most like to see changed about the Hunter. These can be sweeping changes, like Focus has intrinsic value or mobile combat, or small-focused changes, like alterations to specific skills or rotations.

I’d like to avoid the snarky comments/suggestions as that just slows the process down. So please, avoid posting things like:
“Everything!”
“Have you read anything I’ve posted in the last year?!”
“What’s the point? Not like you’ll listen!”

I want you to be honest and critical, but stay on topic and come at this with a desire to see real change.

My initial brain dump:

1: Legendary traits that are genuinely legendary.
Bow of the Righteous - Morale restore as well as power on each hit. Particularly now it has been nerfed.
Press Onward - scale it properly, remove the induction, or make it a non-legendary trait.

2: Removal or retrenchment of meaningless traits and skills.
Heartseeker - scale it or remove it.
Yellow line needs a COMPLETE revamp. Too many totally silly traits in there to make slotting the rather nice Explosive Arrow worthwhile. Particuarly given that Adaptation is now a given in raids.
Animations on some skills are too long - e.g. Hunter's Art, Cry of the Hunter. In fact, remove Hunter's Art altogether in favour of the "mark" idea below.
Camouflage to grant genuine benefit (e.g. movement, aggro reduction), or be deleted.
Desperate Flight to be edited/revamped.

3: Scaling of skills
Campfire, Press Onward, Heartseeker to be properly scaled.

4: Consolidation of skills and legacies.
Tracking - ONE skill please.
Port skills - ONE please.
Bow Critical Multiplier - ONE legacy, please.

5: Unique benefits
Currently we have 40m range, and that's it. What else can we uniquely offer to a fellowship?

6: Mitigations
Medium armour classes have the WORST mitigations of all. Return the mit curve to pre-ROI values please.

7: New ideas
Hunters able to place a "mark" on target like burg's Reveal Weakness. Stance dependent. Either debuffs movement and slows attack speed (yellow), increases incoming critical damage (blue) or increases incoming ranged damage (red). Like Hunter's Art, really.
Lendas' idea of Improved Fleetness to allow INDUCTION skills to be used on the move. Focus cost and power cost should provide a decent balancing factor.
Campfires should be placeable in combat, particularly if you trait lots of yellow.

Hi Kelsen, welcome and good look with us. We're a tough group to deal with.

My post is sincerely without snark or negativity so please don't read it that way.

What I think would be most helpful to the hunter class and community first and foremost is to have you had out on live as an endgame hunter and play. Just see the challenges we face for yourself on live and then come back and I think it will help parse all the feedback you'll be getting, which will be alot.

If I could create an itinerary for you were you to take me up on my request it would be for you to try out the following:

1) Fight 1v1 in the Ettenmoors. Try it as the average player would. Fight all of the ranked (8+) creep classes with each side having 2 OP.s Specifically I'd like to you fight under these circumstances; and specially the creeps will use all pots available to them and have all store-skills purchased:

a. BA with Moving Target up active.
b. Reaver who will use charge, wrath, Dying Rage and will line of sight you.
c. Defiler using enhanced flies
d. War Leader who will LOS
e. Warg who use all his CD's and will start off with a pounce
f. Weaver who attacks from OOC burrow and fights in Melee Range and then will burrow again later in the fight.

2) Do the Isengard 3-man Dragnakh Unleashed at level 75 T2C. In the final fight, pay close attention to your role.

3) Use fleetness without traiting for it.

4) Go trapper into an instanced boss fight on T2C and tell your group/raid that you're going to do it.

a. Coincidentally, go Trapper in the Ettenmoors.

I'm sure others can add to this list, but basically, what I'd like you to do is see for yourself our complaints before you see our proposed solutions; cause they can be so subjective.

Pets.


In all seriousness, from the perspective of a Raid Dps/part-time moors hunter:

1)A revamp to yellow line. CC is needed very situationally now and there are classes that can do it better. I'd prefer a Debuff/ hybrid melee/ moors soloing line but I'm sure there are better ideas.

2)More complexity to the class in pve than derp-pen shot. Right now the class's dps is as complex as renewing Improved Fleetness every 30 seconds.

3)Survivability in a form other than an escape skill. Escape skills are a cheap way to mask a class's deficiencies. Ours is the paper-like qualities of medium armor combined with being an induction-based class with no self heals(agile rejoiner does not=self heals).I grew up in the moors soloing, and while it isn't impossible now, it certainly is frustrating.

bonus 4th)Our traits are currently a means to an end, we only throw 5 blue traits out there for Improved fleetness, 5 red for cool burn etc. Over half of our traits are worthless or situational at best:

Red-Critical Eye, Swift Mercy, Shot through the heart
Yellow-Sturdy traps, strong intimidation,Heart of the Bard, Stealthy shot(should be in another line)
Blue-Earthborn, Resolute Aim, Rapid Recovery

"Legendaries"- Bow of the Righteous, Press Onwards

Sidenote: As a dps class it's frustrating to only have 2 dps increasing legendaries both of which are capstones.


I think more than anything we want to work with our dev on changes, we like communication. When that hasn't happened we've ended up with ideas like Group desperate flight, split-shot,Hunter's art, and Cry of the Hunter.

Greetings, I sincerely hope you brought your flame &&&&&&ant pants to this :)

Anyway onto ideas....

1) Replace LI melee weapon with a quiver in your class item slot (which, I think we should have had from inception, but hey-ho, water under the bridge and all that) then we can have something like (almost) every other class, at least a few base passives on our LI's. I'm thinking red -power cost, blue -power cost and something else and golden -power cost and 2 others.

2)One reliable self heal that isn't a) on a 5 min cooldown and requires a legendary trait or b) relient upon a combat response for a VERY small HoT.

3) Pretty much most of what Aed put up.

4)Just waiting for Lendas to find this thread........... :P

The Hunter was my first alt, but I no longer play it because frankly it is boring. I am coming to this then from that angle and as such here is what I feel are the top three things that should be changed:

Legendary Traits

My main is a Lore-master. They have good legendary traits. I assumed the other classes likewise had good legendary traits. Creating a Hunter alt proved how wrong I was.

The main problem here is that they just do not feel legendary. In some cases they feel more like ordinary skills masquerading as legendary abilities e.g. Press Onward. In other cases, e.g. Bow of the Righteous, they simply don't have enough utility to warrant them being legendary traits.

To me a legendary trait should feel legendary. It should be spectacular. On my Lore-master I can smash someone into the ground with an Ent! AN ENT! With my Hunter I can get a few points of power back when I hit someone. Not much of a comparison is it?

Skill & Traits

There are too many abilities that are frankly not worth using. Heartseeker is a great example of this, a skill that is supposed to be a big hitter, but that is usually sidelined in favour of other skills because they end up doing more damage. Or the Trapper of Foes traitline: the CC is too weak and ineffective, too reliant on using a specialised legendary weapon and the individual traits often feel very boring and lacklustre. Camouflage is another example: I can stand still in stealth ... why no bonus to hitting from stealth or a trait that ties in with it? I could go on citing more examples, but I think I have made my point.

It's not that I except every single skill or trait to be sublime in its effects, but they should all be useful at least. That means that their animations shouldn't take an age to play out; it means that their effects should be noticeable and fun; it means that I shouldn't feel as if I am filling in my trait slots with useless bunk just to get to a set bonus or legendary ability.

The Ettenmoors

I understand that the Ettenmoors is setup for group play. In that respect the Hunter does ok. A Hunter with the support of healers, Guardians, etc can do well. However, there is such an enormous disparity between the Hunter and some other classes in 1vs1 situations that it simply doesn't feel right.

I do not know how much it would impact the design goal of the Ettenmoors, but couldn't the Hunter be thrown a bone in 1vs1 situations? Something to give them just a bit more survivability and elevate them above the rank of Ettenmoors whipping boy.

(1) Legacy revamp.
* Why split Induction and Focus? Currently we've got [Induction, Focus] * [Crit Mult, Power, Threat Down]. If you combined the six into three, I might actually use Power or Threat Down. As it is, there are too many nice bow majors, and the lottery of getting more than 3 majors sucks as usual. I might like to use Bow Crit Mult/QS Crit/Bow Power/MS Cooldown?/Barbed Arrow Bleed/Bow Threat Down?.
* I don't see any use for block chance or evade chance, especially with the bow chants we have; nor ranged evade rating
* The melee legacies are lackluster. It may be that you (plural) want hunters to be both melee and ranged, but that's not how it's worked out, at least in groups. Hunters are ranged and build for it, and do worse standing in melee. So the following never get used: Blindside Critical Rating, Melee Critical Multiplier, Swift Stroke Parry and Evade Rating, Melee Critical Rating. Low Cut should get an innate bleed and Low Cut Bleed Chance should be changed to Bleed Magnitude. Agile Rejoinder is OK, though it's only on my main hand weapon because there's not much else desirable. Mine end up with Maximum Targets for AoE Skills/Critical Magnitude in Precision Stance/Needful Haste Duration/Agile Rejoinder Heal Chance/Low Cut Bleed Chance/Agility, with all the minors being "meh". More interesting choices would be nice.

(2) Improved Fleetness becomes a toggle, or always on, when the Improved Fleetness trait is slotted. When slotted, it's a 30s duration with a 30s cooldown.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Currently we have 40m range, and that's it. What else can we uniquely offer to a fellowship?

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...and also...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nakiami

* The melee legacies are lackluster. It may be that you (plural) want hunters to be both melee and ranged, but that's not how it's worked out, at least in groups. Hunters are ranged and build for it, and do worse standing in melee.

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my #1) DPS should be superior to all classes unless we get a material second skill set.
RKs can currently out DPS a Hunter, and that is crazy given they are also very powerful healers. Since we are "single role" (at best some minor CC skills), we should be best at that skill (ranged DPS). If this is not the "stereotype" and we are supposed to have material CC as well to supplement the damage, then we need material CC (which we do not have today like an RK has material healing and then has some minor CC). Melee is also not that second skill set :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Heartseeker - scale it or remove it.

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my #2) Scale Heart Seeker and/or do something different to increase its capability (In addition to scaling, the skill got a nerf here when all attacks became auto-hit, so the "auto hit" feature of this is now a waste of "value" (and still won't auto hit anything above level))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oldin

3) Survivability in a form other than an escape skill. Escape skills are a cheap way to mask a class's deficiencies. Ours is the paper-like qualities of medium armor combined with being an induction-based class with no self heals(agile rejoiner does not=self heals).I grew up in the moors soloing, and while it isn't impossible now, it certainly is frustrating.

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My #3) Something materially useful for (solo focused IMHO) survivability (material increase to morale or mitigations or something)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nakiami

(1) Legacy revamp.
As it is, there are too many nice bow majors, and the lottery of getting more than 3 majors sucks as usual.

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:) yes

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Hunters able to place a "mark" on target like burg's Reveal Weakness. Stance dependent. Either debuffs movement and slows attack speed (yellow), increases incoming critical damage (blue) or increases incoming ranged damage (red). Like Hunter's Art, really.
Lendas' idea of Improved Fleetness to allow INDUCTION skills to be used on the move. Focus cost and power cost should provide a decent balancing factor.
Campfires should be placeable in combat, particularly if you trait lots of yellow.

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Another alternative for the "mark": Method of transferring threat:
e.g. Opposite of Noble Mark
e.g. Opposite of Shield Brother/To Arms

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Bow of the Righteous - Morale restore as well as power on each hit. Particularly now it has been nerfed.

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I'll admit I'm concerned about this, though haven't yet seen the effect "in the field" since I haven't been on Bullroarer with my Hunter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Yellow line needs a COMPLETE revamp. Too many totally silly traits in there to make slotting the rather nice Explosive Arrow worthwhile. Particuarly given that Adaptation is now a given in raids.

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Do something with trapping capabilities, too much of the high end stuff is effectively immune, making those wasted at the high end of things - so if that is the direction, then this should have material benefits when out solo (like a traited skill that has a huge heal and triples threat - which effectively makes it dangerous in a group, but completely harmless solo)

Another alternative for yellow or another skill: Something like Rain of Thorns that would disarm other ranged attackers (those that wield bows), so as to get some reprieve in situations with only a lot of ranged attackers and pinning folks isn't useful.

Things I don't use:
Split Shot
Press Onward (the induction is - literally - killer [to self])
Low Cut (too late once they are in close combat)

Well, if we want to talk sweeping:



Traitlines, Stances and Focus.

Right now Huntsman line and Precision have the monopoly on Focus generation, which reduces the other stances and traitlines to 'situational at best'. Every traitline should have a method of generating focus - but they should all do it differently. Likewise, passive focus generation needs to spread across all stances, but not necessarily at the same rate. With that in mind...

1) Traitlines.

Bowmaster = DPS
a) Combine the -inductions and +damage/crit from blue and red into Bowmaster bonuses, and consolidate individual traits dealing with bow-based attacks into the Bowmaster line.
b) Combine the effects of Improved Fleetness and Cool Burn into a new Bowmaster legendary skill that increases damage, boosts focus generation, and lowers inductions for a brief time.

Huntsman = Mobility/Survivability/Melee
a) Rework trait bonuses to improve in-combat run speed and mitigations, improve reduction of focus loss from movement. Consolidate individual traits for survival skills (do we need 2 seperate traits for SoTE, etc.?) and add traits improving (low cut slow removal!) and adding focus generation to melee skills.
b) Replace Huntsman legendary with (edit: Forgot to fill this part in before posting :P ) a 15-20s 40% parry/evade boost on a 5m CD.

Trapper = CC/Utility
a) Rework trait bonuses to gradually reduce CD of Distracting Shot and Rain of Thorns. Add traits to improve Hunter utility skills (Bright Campfire gets +hope or +tact mits, Desperate Flight gives entire Fellowship a brief speed/mits boost, etc.).
b) Replace consumable traps (we have enough consumables to manage, thanks) with class items that alter the effects of traps/snares laid. Add traits to further improve and add effects/debuffs.
c) Replace Trapper legendary with 'Lethal Trap', trap skill that applies increased initial damage, slows, DOTs, and -incoming healing to one target.


2) Stances

a) Spread focus generation to all stances. Strength stance now ignores % of target mitigations with 1 focus/5 secs, Precision stance ignores % of B/P/E with 1 focus/5 secs, Endurance stance keeps -threat and -power consumption with 1 focus/4 seconds. New stance: Fleet stance, which eliminates focus loss and miss % while moving, with 1 focus/6 seconds.
b) Change Quick Shot's stance-specific bonuses for: Strength now applies mitigation debuff to target, Precision cannot be B/P/E'd, Fleet gets 40% 8 second slow (formerly from Strength), and Endurance keeps threat reduction.


3) Miscellaneous

a) Legendaries. Traitline legendaries are addressed, and Rain of Thorns and Bard's Arrow are in a pretty good place. This leaves Press Onward and BoTR, which are both approaching Bad Joke status. Press Onward needs to become an instant, scaled % heal as just about everyone else has asked for over the last year, and BoTR...if power management skills aren't going to be the focus post Fate and Power revamp, then this needs to change direction entirely. Maybe a '20s worth of all bow skills having no inductions' on a 3-5m CD?

b) Change Desperate Flight to a 130-140% sprint with increased mits, traitable to apply to entire Fellowship. Lower CD to 5m.

c) Clean up Legacies. Apply 13% crit mag to all stances, change numerical rating legacies to %, etc.




Kind of a cheat, I know, but it's really hard to pick ONLY three things I want to fix about my favorite class right now.

1) Aggro management. Burglar and champs have it pretty nice as either resetting or dumping it respectively. Sure we have distracting shot now but still.. Going endurance is still needed if you don't want to aggro and that is not the dps stance.

2) Survivability as spoken previously by others. Mostly the mits % is quite low, i have easily more with minstrel (even if it has a 10% reduced cap) than with hunter. How is this possible? And the burglar has the same problems but that's for another thread..

3) General stuff:
- Legendary items' legacies are pretty useless overall. Replace some with skill dmg bonuses like more dmg % or less cds like other classes have (on useful skills btw).
- Traits: legendary traits are pretty &&&&. How can a dps class have 7 and only use 1 dps trait at a time?... Sure we have Press Onward(...) and Bow of the Righteous but that's pretty okish compared to burg or champ.
- Yellow line: plainly worthless.
- Strength Stance: for what? slow on QS? (I would propose a cc stance instead with the slow on it anyway).
- HS seriously bad;
barbed arrow's usefulness is doubtfull vs other dps skills;
merciful shot could use a slight boost maybe? So it doesnt need the trait - im not using it without it;
all the weird non-induction roots this class has: RoA,RoT,BH

My experience is PvE only.

Good luck man!

HUNTER!!!

Disclaimer: my primary class is minstrel, and my hunter is a bit rp-centric, so the following suggestions are cast from that light

1. I wholeheartedly agree with general class skill scaling issues. I currently still don't use heart-seeker unless I am pulling with it due to it's induction to dps output. Press Onward was fantastic at level 50, but 35 levels later, it isn't so much.

2. From a minnie's perspective, my hunter friends are having a TON of aggro issues. My server is SATURATED with hunters, and though I love them dearly, they die quickly when they pull aggro. Heal tank or heal hunter... I would like to see a little more benefit to beneath notice. In general, it seems skills not just limited to hunter which "drop aggro" only do so for the duration of the skill. In contrast, I would like to see a noticed after skill use decrease in aggro depending on the skill. example:
Beneath Notice: pre-skill use: 1000 points of aggro, and #1 on hate list. During skill use: 0 points of aggro and last on list After skill use: aggro points are reduced by a percentage of the original. This should be enough to be below the aggro of the tank. Example: Beneath Notice reduces aggro by 25%, so aggro points are reduced to 750. A trait making camouflage usable in combat would be nice. Maybe it could become a channel similar to minstrel's play dead. It would still break when you move or use skills.

3. A viable choice of speed vs power. When I think of a hunter, I think of 3 choices:
* a hunter who draws his\her bow carefully, aims, and shoots for massive damage in one shot. This would draw the most aggro, as the mob would feel it most.
* a hunter who quickly unleashes a barrage of arrows, not quite as accurate or as powerful as the first, but would not draw as much attention from the mob...think being hit by toothpicks vs pencils.
* a balanced hunter whose damage is still respectable, but focuses on other things, such as Crowd Control, tracking, and survival.

4. I like the previous poster's idea of a consolidated hunter travel skill. A single skill slot which pops up a window or a drop down list of destinations would certainly simplify this skill. (though Tonic Bars is a HUGE help here)

Overall, the fact that there are a lot of hunters out there tells me this is currently a pretty fun, basic damage class. The addition of some versatility and a second look at less used and unproperly scaled traits and skills could greatly benefit the class.

Legacies--bow legacies are boring, aside from needing to be consolidated. Melee weapon has some fun ones, but also plenty of useless ones. No amount of melee boost makes much difference, even solo.

Legendary traits--I've never considered slotting PO, and never considered unslotting BotR, though I'll see if BotR becomes 100% useless soon.

Heartseeker is useless unless scaled. Hunter's Art animation is annoying. I like Camouflage, but agree that it could use a small bonus to stealth attacks.

Other than that, I am pretty happy with playing Hunter. I like Split Shot. I don't 1v1 in the 'moors anymore, but I don't imagine there's much of a way to boost a class that relies on inductions in an environment where skill is measured by how quickly you can run through a person without making PvE pretty overpowered.

Hunters got a dev now?

OK
-Remove Trapper line to begin with.
-Replace it with a line that reduces threat and power cost. And add debuffs to targets. A nice raiding setup.
-Make Bowmaster line the main big numbers line + sort of cc added in. For questing and PvMP.
-Make Huntsman line the fast hitting line with limited cc, limited aggro management, more movable skills and no focus loss on movement. More damage then the 1st line i mentioned. Should be the line that potentially gets the most DPS, but is dangerous to get aggro in raids.

And add some more survivability skills, and the lines will have an effect on them.

There's a lot of great input and advice on this thread, so much of what I'll say is going to be repeats of what others are saying.

1. Overall picture- the hunter should be the king of ranged dps. That's how we started, but over time we've been nerfed or other classes have been buffed and it doesn't hold up anymore. RK's out-dps hunters, and they can heal while hunters don't have a second viable skill set. And I've seen Minis put out close to the same dps as hunters when they want to. Burgs and Champs can also compete on level, though they are up close. But all of those also have survivability skills so that if they're getting whacked they have ways to survive it. If a hunter starts getting whacked, he's got a good chance of dropping pretty quick. I don't mind being a glass cannon so much, but if I am I ought to be doing a lot more damage than those others that aren't to make up for it.

2. As others have said, our legendaries ought to be legendary. But as the others have said many of them haven't kept up or have been nerfed (and are being nerfed again). Please take a look at those and give some of them some life again.

3. Heartseeker needs help! I've been releveling another hunter, and at level 54 his heartseeker packs a punch- almost like the skill used to in the old days. I love using it at that level because it means something. At level 85, pfft. Unless I'm opening with it, I completely ignore it. It just isn't worth it when Swift Bow will do more damage with a shorter induction. As much as I'd hate to see it disappear, I'd rather it did that see it sitting there mocking me while I remember what the skill used to be a couple of years ago.

4. I like the idea of consolidating the tracking skills. I wouldn't mind some of our consumables being looked at and ways found to consolidate them as well. To many, between the oils, bow chants, traps, and other items. There are times I'll have a bag filled just with hunter specific consumables, which is silly.


One other point I do disagree with the others on though- leave the travel skills alone. There is already a Travel Plug In that does exactly what people are asking for- pulls the skills off of your quckslots and puts them into a drop down menu, and adds the new ones you earn to it as you get them. The only thing maybe to change there is to incorporate the plugin into the standard UI of the hunter, but that seems a lot of extra work for little benefit when it's already there. Hunters that complain about to many travel skills on their quickslots need to take the 5 minutes to download and install that plugin, and that's it. Problem solved. Take your time and work on the other issues instead.


[add- soooo happy I copied this post before hitting the reply button as the flippin' forum logged me out while I was typing it. I can't wait for the forum revamp that is supposed to be coming and hopefully fix issues like this that have been going on for 2+ years now]

Most classes take a while to really take off. 30's or 40's for most of them. I noticed that the hunter is almost the opposite. Once you hit the 40's your effectiveness in combat starts to drop. I will also agree that their CC is not what it should be. For instance the traps that the weap. smith makes are best used against mobs 5 levels lower than you are. (e.g. traps usable at 35 are used against 30 and below.) I also think the camo. skill should be useable while moving. I know that Burgs (which I have several of) will talk about impinging on their turf, but there are a number of ways it could be useful and still separate from burgs. Have it be 1-4 levels below you, no leaf-walker trait (so it's slow) things like that.

I have concerns about power regen, but I'm waiting on U10 to see what it will look like.

I also agree that there are several skills that I never use and could do without. Including most of the Legendary traits. I love Press Onward, but it's usefulness in combat is well.......... Oh, I generally run solo and love Heartseeker, btw. Though it really could use a bit more damage at higher levels.

If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.

Thanks

1: Elaborate a more dynamic gameplay:
* fire on the move (execution post stance is boring and it's 5 years old now)
* combos skills (skill A+Skill B immediatly after A=Effect of A+B+sthing)
* no more penshot spamming
* Focus : each stance generate it and it should not be necessary to use it to maintain effect (like fleetness). Focus should be use only to fire our stronger damage skills

2: survivability : evade skills (not parry skills), speed skills maybe bubbles and one reliable healing skill (Improved Press onward should be design with that in mind: instant, ueseable on the move)

3: A secondary role : cc is not very usefull in pvmp now and also in raid (boss part) Maybe a debuffer way ?

Small things that count :

Remove the big yellow cross on heartseeker. It was usefull on lvl 50 but now....

Hello!
I would love to see hunters as the top dps class - particularly if we aren't going to have the survivability of other classes. I don't particularly care about trappers/CC, and don't think it should necessarily be buffed to become a proper secondary role, though it'd be nice if it added something to a group.
Would be interesting whether trappers could possibly become a PvP-oriented trait line - something that wouldn't boost us in PvE but would give us the utility to survive and kill WELL in the moors. Although I'm only new in the moors, it's irritating how much I (currently) rely on my fellow freeps to survive, to always be targeted first - when other classes seem to have it much easier.

Will probably clarify my ideas in a later post, I understand this isn't the most clear/decisive look in on my opinions.

1.Single target DPS role needs to pack more punch.

2. Heartseeker needs to be scaled. I hit less now than when my hunter was at 75.

3. No induction on press onward.

4. Do something to make a hunter special and desirable in a raid/fellowship situation again. Possibly increase range?

As a hunter if the mob doesn't die fast enough I am dead. Given that fact the above could improve the current situation

1. Add induction reduction to bows and/or traits. Before I made the switch to LIs, all the bows I used had a reduction to all inductions. I can see that while regular bows continue to feature this passive sometimes, hunters' legendary bows do not. After looking at who would use a non-legendary bow, it seems only champs and guards would use them. Champs and guards don't have inductions. Hunters do. I would like for hunters to reclaim this passive.

2. New skill idea: Desperate Shot. The idea is that it is a powerful shot that is only available when the hunter is below a certain threshold of morale. Perhaps this threshold could be 25% with an accompanying trait where if you are below 10% it automatically crits.

3. It would be nice to have the options that most classes have for defensive LI titles. My melee weapon doesn't need +8 damage vs giants. However I could certainly benefit from some tactical mitigation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kelsan

Hey all,

It’s your friendly-neighborhood-hunter-dev here to say ‘Hello’ and get the discussion going on the very exciting Revamp you’ve been hearing about.

What I’d like to get from you all are the top 3 things you’d most like to see changed about the Hunter. These can be sweeping changes, like Focus has intrinsic value or mobile combat, or small-focused changes, like alterations to specific skills or rotations.

I’d like to avoid the snarky comments/suggestions as that just slows the process down. So please, avoid posting things like:
“Everything!”
“Have you read anything I’ve posted in the last year?!”
“What’s the point? Not like you’ll listen!”

I want you to be honest and critical, but stay on topic and come at this with a desire to see real change.

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Top three things i want to see?
1. Update class traits/lines/trees
2. A mobile combat stance where inductions are usable on the move (there will need to be a counter balance to this of course)
3. Update old/unused skills/stances so they are not covered and dust so that people want to use them

On a side note: This has nothing to do with being snarky but there are a lot of well thought out and useful threads which have been around for a while which can be easily found and used to help you on your search for what hunters want.

Also thanks for finally posting (my hunters is my main and the lack of communication was starting to kinda make want to leave).

Greetings! To be honest all I really want is being able to shoot Barbed Arrow on the move, of course while I have Scourging Blow effect up.
And maybe Agile Rejoinder should not be parry gated, but all b/p/e or something.

Cheers!

Hello and thanks for asking for input.

1. Constant and honest communication. We can understand nerfs if REASONS are explained to us. We can understand delays or technical infeasiblility or conflicting future goals if someone lays out the cards on the table. And call a spade a spade. We can respect nerfs but not nerfs-pretending-to-be-features.

2. Respect. Show us that you understand the history of how this class was treated. Of all achetypes in game there is no other class that have been stepped on, neglected, mistreated more than this one. Many people have already stopped playing it, and more importantly stop PAYING. You guys have the data. You know that there are more Hunters than any other classes. Bad things done to this class threatens to alienate the biggest portion of your customers. That's your financial bottomline. I have never once seen any Turbine officials treat this segment of their customers with respect, much less a special majority. Let's hope this is a genuine new beginning.

3. Play our class. Yes, try to get a spot in a raid. Try to get a spot in a 3-man. Try to solo in the Moors. Look at our skills and then at other classes. Do other classes have skills that haven't been scaled since level 50 or 65? Do other classes have absurd 'bult-in failures' like hunter mounted skills? If you are going to represent this class then please you need the simple pre-requisite of having played it A LOT. That is the ONLY way you'll know the things we have to put up with.

Hello Kelsan!

Ive been gone for 2 years. Before I left, and immediately after I returned, I felt like the Hunter Class was still powerful and useful. HOWEVER.. when I started the Dunland Epic Line, I realized I was badly gimped as a hunter in a specific way:

I CANNOT handle multiple strong adds, or waves, or surprise encounters, especially in epic book quests, and also in a great many skirmishes.

Now I realize I have many, many tools, such as crafted hunter traps, as well as stun and fear arrows. However, in a SUSTAINED, SOLO fight, they are used up very quickly and then you are left with nothing. For example, in the Dunland book quest where you are aiding the Rohirrin to assault Isengard, I was completely overwhelmed and died, being unable to complete a book quest solo that HAD to be competed solo. At that point, I retired my hunter, feeling he was useless in a pinch, good for only carefully set up, perfect encounters (at which she EXCELS).

Once my long-cooldown emergency skills are used up, I feel like a naked baby in a pit of wolves.

So my TLDR answer to your question is this: How can the Hunter be crafted to better handle sustained encounters in scripted instances and skirmishes, without unbalancing us in open world pve?

-I would love to see more options for morale conservation in long, sustained battles (A battle stance that drops dps but increases defense?)
- I would like to see more options for withdrawal and distance in order to set up our amazing archery attacks.

Thanks for listening!

Hi Kelsan, the above posters have some good ideas, however, let me throw out some of mine:
1) dire need to make the Oil removable Oil bought at the hunter vendor stack-able to 50.
2) Remake the scare crow trap better, right now its a joke, my thoughts is when dropped it radiates fear to all creatures that come within 10m for 15 to 30 seconds for 1 minute.
3) consolidate the bear trap and strong trap into one. Make it the best of both, i.e. duration, damage and hold.
4) combine scholar scrolls of block and evade.
5) make hunter scholar scrolls stack-able use. I.e. I would have block & evade up and Damage one as well.
6) make the Light and fire Oils do more, i.e. Light more miss and bonus to damage to Light vulnerable mobs. Fire better D.O.T. scalability per scholar crafting tier and tell in tool tip how much the D.O.T. does as well, bonus to Fire vulnerable mobs, and what is the critical bonus in tool tip written better.
7) Heart Seeker, if you don't want to give more upfront damage then remove the induction and reduce the power cost and cool down. Note, you could have the trait add to that and/or more in the red line starts to remove induction, lower power cost and cool down :)
8) have agile rejoin. return power as well and morale.
9) Have the focus skill be instant 9 focus, instead of powering up, too many times i never got to full 9 focus being thrown into combat by various things.
10) Hunter's art turned into i.e. Ranger's mark.

Thanks.

1) Scaled Heartseeker
2) Legacies for Focus & Induction damage and power combined into 2 legacies, instead of 4.
3) I lost my train of thought when I got to #3. I'd be okay with some of the other ideas presented about aggro management or consolidating travel skills.