Update 26.1 Hunter Changes reported on +Cord of the Rings

[Neere_CH]

Ranged have an easier time dealing with most mechanics and have less dps downtime. Several examples - boss is kited by a tank, ranged can stay in place, benefiting from ground targeted buffs, continues to dps; boss applies a debuff on a player, which requires them to move away from the group - ranged can move away and continue to dps; boss does aoe attack around itself - ranged can ignore that and continue to dps, etc, etc, etc. In an ideal world, this should result in achieving the same overall damage as melee, who have more dps downtime.

I'm not arguing that, guys, I know it. I'm just saying that warden can tank (quite well), champs can tank (kind of...), burglars can cc and debuff, rk can heal, but if you'd take dps from hunter, it could only port you from Bree to Minas Tirith. I just want the class to be more versatile (at least ranged cc mentioned above).

[Chris91]

I'm not arguing that, guys, I know it. I'm just saying that warden can tank (quite well), champs can tank (kind of...), burglars can cc and debuff, rk can heal, but if you'd take dps from hunter, it could only port you from Bree to Minas Tirith. I just want the class to be more versatile (at least ranged cc mentioned above).

Regardless of the fact that Warden tanks are outclassed by Captain, Beornings and Guardians, Champion tanks are about as viable as Support Hunters and RK heals are outclassed by Beornings and Minstrel

In the end all this does not matter. What matters is what a class can bring to one fight, so anything that's locked out by another spec does not matter. A DPS Warden can't tank, a dps RK can't heal, a dps Champ can't tank etc.

The argument that a class has more than one role can be played from both sides. If you say Hunter should be a better dps than say Warden you could also say Guardian should be a better tank -> which results in Warden not having a single viable spec.
Hence your argument is flawed and it's best to forget that line of thinking because it can never result in balance.

[Strider5548]

I'm laughing at some posts saying hunters will be super OP now. None of you unless you are on Palantir have actually tested any of the changes. No specifics were given outside of "increased greatly" or "decreased slightly". Those adjectives don't mean anything, and we'll see once it's released how this impacts hunters.

[Aeviternus]

I'm laughing at some posts saying hunters will be super OP now. None of you unless you are on Palantir have actually tested any of the changes. No specifics were given outside of "increased greatly" or "decreased slightly". Those adjectives don't mean anything, and we'll see once it's released how this impacts hunters.

It's my conjecture. Feel free to take me up on it next week.

However - no offence - we know you do not maximise your Hunter's output. That is exactly what I meant when I said the majority of people do not know how to play one. It will be people like you who say "This is great, Hunters are finally viable again", while those who min/max their DPS will likely outshine everyone else. This is what years of class tuning has taught me. Just wait and see.

[Elmagor]

~12 hours ago we try find tank/healer to fill our raid standing on T1 Shelob in Remmorchant. 800+ players online on server, most of them don't care or don't know tactic. I try check 130 levels class by class, no one stands in Remmorchant. Where was only 1 raid on server. After Shelob, I go to T3 mini-bosses raid. Once again, only 1 raid on server. When we come closer to 2nd boss, another players start gathering people for mini-bosses. Ok, 2 raids from whole 800+ players. With having Remmorchant as DPS raid, last nerfs hit too hard. Most of players don't care about raids, waiting until developers do something. May be they can't kill bosses because SSG nerf RKs, so we need someone else now in their place. It's not about players learn their class, it's about amount of players who can go into raid and can do something in raid. Maybe someone can preform great in raid now, and kill main bosses on T3 or even T5 right now, but I never seen such players in PUG raids. OP or don't OP, I don't care what SSG do with hunters, at least they try something and maybe they can be more effective now. Many players have hunters, if they can deal more damage after that update, it's good thing for everyone.

[Gunhard]

Many players have hunters, if they can deal more damage after that update, it's good thing for everyone.

Yes, coz hunters were way behind other classes in both pug runs and kin runs basically. Last nerf didnt hit hard ppl who dont raid, as you mentioned some ppl dont care about raids and they dont wait devs, they just continue to not care about raids. As of pug runs what i see is some ppl who can play just carry other who just bad, pretty much doable on t1, thats why many stuck at b3 coz need coordination from everyone but not just half. Same you can see from fire phase on t1 when half of the pugs are just fail coz 4-5 ranged cant kill 2.3mil spider in time. I was really surprised how many not geared at all ppl want to join t2 side bosses runs, they just dont care at all, green gear for t2, not even maxed at least main stat on lis etc. Those ppl barely played any t1/2 instances runs it seems and if do then its underleveled solo versions probably coz you get same runes/boxes but want to join t2 raid. So it is what it is, casuals stay where they are and it doesnt matter whats going on around is that buffs or nerfs. Also since you can get gear from t1 runs, running 3 times a week, most kins who do it regulary already fully geared with all alts. So just some casual try to runs something, but as i wrote, they just dont care much. In prime time on easy b1 phases there are plenty of raids going on.

[Elmagor]

Yes, coz hunters were way behind other classes in both pug runs and kin runs basically. Last nerf didnt hit hard ppl who dont raid, as you mentioned some ppl dont care about raids and they dont wait devs, they just continue to not care about raids. As of pug runs what i see is some ppl who can play just carry other who just bad, pretty much doable on t1, thats why many stuck at b3 coz need coordination from everyone but not just half.

I think developers had good job trying to hide DPS race on every boss with different tactics (you can't kill boss fast, but you need break his shield fast, or kill adds fast), but it's sad what they can't make any boss without DPS races. And when people keep dying, you can't res them all and don't have enough time for DPS race. Many players don't care about raids because they thinks what raid doesn't important, or think what they don't ready for it. But you don't know if you ready or not until you try.

Same you can see from fire phase on t1 when half of the pugs are just fail coz 4-5 ranged cant kill 2.3mil spider in time. I was really surprised how many not geared at all ppl want to join t2 side bosses runs, they just dont care at all, green gear for t2, not even maxed at least main stat on lis etc. Those ppl barely played any t1/2 instances runs it seems and if do then its underleveled solo versions probably coz you get same runes/boxes but want to join t2 raid.

I seen many players with huge amount of T1-T2 gear, who don't know anything about 2-4 bosses. Mini bosses acts like bless and curse of Remmorchant in same time. And in fire phase main mistake from players - they trying to stay in place. Just put as many DoTs as you can on fire spiderling and RUN. Don't wait, don see if he die or not, just RUN. Run away, hold him in target, if he come closer, deal more damage and run again. Too many players stay and act like "Only I can kill it, so I must stay and make suicide". No. You need survive, or you can't kill spiderling on next wave. More people alive, more people damage on boss, if you die, raid have less amount of people, less amount of people must work with puddles. Main problem with 3rd boss is puddles. They last not long and not every player get debuffs. With such lags and horrible server perfomance, you can't do anything with that. You must just be lucky enough to not heal boss. They need fix servers OR change how puddles works, or most of players never reach Shelob.

So it is what it is, casuals stay where they are and it doesnt matter whats going on around is that buffs or nerfs. Also since you can get gear from t1 runs, running 3 times a week, most kins who do it regulary already fully geared with all alts. So just some casual try to runs something, but as i wrote, they just dont care much. In prime time on easy b1 phases there are plenty of raids going on.

Agree, but... we have fire phase 3 weeks in a row now. It's totally random, or we have 3 weeks with fire, 1 week without fire between them. Fire phase not hard as many players thinking, they just need don't afraid of it. 31th may will be soon, that means some of players lose their access to Remmorchant.

[JoRDee]

Idk why its so hard to just increase or decrease damage of skills. Nothing is wrong with hunter rotation in red at least to mess with CDs. While you got yellow RKs over here struggling to find a skill to use cause CDs, lets not even talk about the writ of lightning bug. Who is ready for good hunters to go from 125k to 200k on dummies poggers.

[Elmagor]

Idk why its so hard to just increase or decrease damage of skills. Nothing is wrong with hunter rotation in red at least to mess with CDs. While you got yellow RKs over here struggling to find a skill to use cause CDs, lets not even talk about the writ of lightning bug. Who is ready for good hunters to go from 125k to 200k on dummies poggers.

Too bad what Remmorchant not filled with dummies

[JoRDee]

Too bad what Remmorchant not filled with dummies

Yeah they will only have to be perfect for 20-40 secs not moving and stand 40m range on boss 1 killing spiderlings with a flick of the wrist. Boss 3 may be a bit challenging though lol. It will be harder to do a 3min parse on a dummy for most. They need a buff for skills to do more damage on use but some of these CDs in red are asinine and not needed but least we don't have to waste our time on BR for nothing might as well shutter down.

[Miles_Ancestor]

Yellow Line
Lingering Wound now costs 2 focus....

I find I can't get past my incredulity for this.
A good while back they body-slammed this with adding 3sec cooldown, effectively tripling CD (along with lowering initial damage while only partially fixing bleed issues).
In response several suggested/entreated for them to reverse this, or at least to enable LW to contribute to focus generation in exchange.

So what do they finally do? Possibly restoring initial damage back to where it already previously was, yes... but retaining the CD and then debilitatively doubling down by suplexing LW with making it actually cost 2 focus to use.

Almost, but sadly not quite entirely, unbelievable.

I'm aware of the unlikelihood of anyone else caring, as they've all long ago given up on Yellow ... and probably justifiably so.
I guess I'm just stubborn (and already an outlier in the player-base, what with playing only solo for 4+ years).

Ah well, just felt strongly about mentioning the ridiculousness of it.

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[EDITED for bit of spelling correction]

[Kander]

I think until we see the changes go live we can only speculate about how the changes are gonna affect end game. Basically because there won't even be an open Bullroarer testing, just a Palantir test and they might change a lot without testing before releasing.
That said I wouldn't be surprised if hunters became number 1 boss dpsers in certain fights in Remmo, basically most bosses are a 20-30s burst race dps check mechanic, where hunters will probably shine using focus pot + burn hot. But rotation might change drastically depending on how skills balance change as they said they were buffing skills differently, I wouldn't be surprised if they made upshot irrelevant again.

[Strider5548]

It's my conjecture. Feel free to take me up on it next week.

However - no offence - we know you do not maximise your Hunter's output. That is exactly what I meant when I said the majority of people do not know how to play one. It will be people like you who say "This is great, Hunters are finally viable again", while those who min/max their DPS will likely outshine everyone else. This is what years of class tuning has taught me. Just wait and see.

The game should never be balanced based on the .00001% who max everything. With that said, I wonder what your concern is. Hunters are clearly not where they need to be today at end game, anyone who disagrees is flat out wrong. Assuming we agree that hunters need to be buffed, are you saying you think these buffs are too strong and that the highest DPS hunters will outshine other classes? So you are concerned that the top top hunters will do better DPS than other classes, and because of that we shouldn't buff the majority of hunters who are not able to participate fully in end game content?

To be honest, these changes don't look over the top at all. They add DPS all around which is good, but we don't quite know to what degree yet (again unless on Palantir). They added focus cost to a lot of stuff which will reduce overall DPS and make it a bit harder. They reduced CDs on a couple big skills but lowered the set bonus and the effect of stacking crit on CDs (which will hurt "higher end" hunters). They made a bunch of changes to melee/traps which won't affect end game hunters, maybe PvMP. They presumably fixed ROA, which is a good thing.

With all that said, because you implied I don't know my class, I feel like I should defend myself. I have played a hunter for 13 years as my main, I know this class pretty damn well. I have left and come back many times and have had to re-learn the dynamics of the class and how stats and LI's and essences and other game mechanics work, but I know the hunter better than most. I am not geared with the raid set, I have a life outside of this game and considering I play a hunter I'm not able to easily find groups to run Remm. I often run my own PUGs which are limited to T1 Boss 1, T2 boss 1 and sides, and occasionally I am invited to T3 side groups. This has left me with a mix of T1 Remm gear and adventurers gear.

I have done everything I can to maximize my own DPS, I weapon swap like crazy, I have built an LM scholar just for consumables, I have maxed my virtues, I have two maxed LI bows, and I practice my rotation on a target dummy every time I play. Unbuffed I do around 100k (no elf bonus) on the target dummy over 3 min. Are there hunters who can do a lot more? Hell yea, they have better gear, and they play elves, and they are better at their rotations than I am. That's a minority of players though, and again, balancing just with a fraction of the player base in mind is foolish.

I fully welcome these and any further changes to improve the hunter. The only downside I see is that more people will try to roll the FOTM, but these are likely the same people who are saying these changes are unnecessary.

[WeirdJedi]

I only have 3 characters. One of them is a hunter. You know why I stopped going into Remmorchant with my hunter? Because my captain was contributing more to the group and dishing out more damage. My hunter was not capable of keeping up with rune-keepers and I have yet to be in a group that passed fire stage successfully. The nail to the coffin was the fact my hunter received 5 Sentinel pieces (agility gear with defensive stats) from the 5 times I passed the first boss without the fire phase. I've recently gave up on the raid all together because the 10 separate days I ran with never passed T1 Second Boss.

I'm not a raider. I just managed to see all of Howling Pit and Abyss of Mordath last week since I found out you can spend 2000 motes on 2 items & 4 essences getting your Light up to 180. We must have tried T1 Anvil of Winterstith first boss every Sunday for 6 weeks before the increase in level cap (which then we were able to pass at level 130). I'm happy we can get a little further in Remmorchant on-level, but the mechanics are too difficult for your typical player. Looking for a specific icon on your avatar, learning what poisons you can remove or cannot without context beforehand, and needing to know the exact spot to stand is tough for those who are just now stepping into the raid.

I do hope these hunter changes help motivate people to join the raid once again, but there is a lot more that need to be fixed if we are going to see more people raiding.

I was really surprised how many not geared at all ppl want to join t2 side bosses runs, they just dont care at all, green gear for t2, not even maxed at least main stat on lis etc. Those ppl barely played any t1/2 instances runs it seems and if do then its underleveled solo versions probably coz you get same runes/boxes but want to join t2 raid.

I think the reason why people want to join T2 Remmorchant side-bosses when they can't clear T1 is because we were all "trained" how possible it was to join T2 Anvil of Winterstith side-bosses for nice rewards (crystals and rimes) without worrying too much about your damage output or mitigations.

[Strider5548]

I only have 3 characters. One of them is a hunter. You know why I stopped going into Remmorchant with my hunter? Because my captain was contributing more to the group and dishing out more damage. My hunter was not capable of keeping up with rune-keepers and I have yet to be in a group that passed fire stage successfully. The nail to the coffin was the fact my hunter received 5 Sentinel pieces (agility gear with defensive stats) from the 5 times I passed the first boss without the fire phase.

If you are on Landroval and need help getting past fire round DM me, happy to take you through it. You just need a group that can follow instructions. I completely agree about the gear drops in Remm, it's really painful for hunters as you have a greater chance of getting a defensive piece vs. DPS. In my experience Wardens will never trade for Warden pieces either since they are all doing DPS builds.

I wouldn't let that deter you, use the embers to build up adventurer's gear and just try to ignore the fact that gearing up is a lot easier for other classes. Hopefully with the changes hunters will catch up soon.

[Zohal]

I have done everything I can to maximize my own DPS, I weapon swap like crazy, I have built an LM scholar just for consumables, I have maxed my virtues, I have two maxed LI bows, and I practice my rotation on a target dummy every time I play. Unbuffed I do around 100k (no elf bonus) on the target dummy over 3 min. Are there hunters who can do a lot more? Hell yea, they have better gear, and they play elves, and they are better at their rotations than I am. That's a minority of players though, and again, balancing just with a fraction of the player base in mind is foolish.

Some years ago Blizzard, who have a certain track record, had the policy of balancing around two criteria:
1) Raids with full buffs etc.
2) The best players / theorycrafting.

Only in Raids can you expect full buffs and content that truly challenges the players. Fellowship Instances have so many variables that it is all but impossible to compare classes, and landscape is hardly challenging at all.

The only groups that really care about the potential of classes are endgame raiders. And not only do they want the best players they want the best classes (within reason). Thus you have to balance classes such that these selective groups have choices and are not forced into certain optimal group compositions. If you balance around anything other than raids, you can be quite certain that Raiders will know the potential of the classes if played to the max.

Mediocrity is a horrible standard for balancing. Classes that are hard to play well will probably have a much higher ceiling than the easier classes, so you will find that the easy classes get excluded from endgame raids, where everybody needs to pull their own weight.

[Aeviternus]

The game should never be balanced based on the .00001% who max everything. With that said, I wonder what your concern is. Hunters are clearly not where they need to be today at end game, anyone who disagrees is flat out wrong. Assuming we agree that hunters need to be buffed, are you saying you think these buffs are too strong and that the highest DPS hunters will outshine other classes? So you are concerned that the top top hunters will do better DPS than other classes, and because of that we shouldn't buff the majority of hunters who are not able to participate fully in end game content?

Balancing should be done at the level of those who can play a class to its fullest potential. That is the only sensible benchmark. You can't define an "average player". You can define a good player; someone who realises a class's potential.

To be honest, these changes don't look over the top at all. They add DPS all around which is good, but we don't quite know to what degree yet (again unless on Palantir). They added focus cost to a lot of stuff which will reduce overall DPS and make it a bit harder. They reduced CDs on a couple big skills but lowered the set bonus and the effect of stacking crit on CDs (which will hurt "higher end" hunters). They made a bunch of changes to melee/traps which won't affect end game hunters, maybe PvMP. They presumably fixed ROA, which is a good thing.

That's where the word "conjecture" kicks in.

With all that said, because you implied I don't know my class, I feel like I should defend myself. I have played a hunter for 13 years as my main, I know this class pretty damn well. I have left and come back many times and have had to re-learn the dynamics of the class and how stats and LI's and essences and other game mechanics work, but I know the hunter better than most. I am not geared with the raid set, I have a life outside of this game and considering I play a hunter I'm not able to easily find groups to run Remm. I often run my own PUGs which are limited to T1 Boss 1, T2 boss 1 and sides, and occasionally I am invited to T3 side groups. This has left me with a mix of T1 Remm gear and adventurers gear.

You responded to me before saying that you do not Bow swap in combat, only for Burn Hot. That clearly indicates you are not maximising the DPS potential of the class you are playing. Which is why the following confuses me:

I have done everything I can to maximize my own DPS, I weapon swap like crazy, I have built an LM scholar just for consumables, I have maxed my virtues, I have two maxed LI bows, and I practice my rotation on a target dummy every time I play. Unbuffed I do around 100k (no elf bonus) on the target dummy over 3 min. Are there hunters who can do a lot more? Hell yea, they have better gear, and they play elves, and they are better at their rotations than I am. That's a minority of players though, and again, balancing just with a fraction of the player base in mind is foolish.

You said before (about two weeks ago?) that you don't weapon swap. In that case, I guess you are a quick study, and I will retract my statement, because last I checked, you said you do around 85k DPS.

However, that still only serves to prove my point. It is easy for you to improve yourself. It is easy for many hunters to improve themselves. Therefore, balancing should not be done around what you consider to be the "average player", because they could easily improve. And then what? It only makes sense to balance around those who can no longer improve to such an extent.

[JoRDee]

Ranged have an easier time dealing with most mechanics and have less dps downtime. Several examples - boss is kited by a tank, ranged can stay in place, benefiting from ground targeted buffs, continues to dps; boss applies a debuff on a player, which requires them to move away from the group - ranged can move away and continue to dps; boss does aoe attack around itself - ranged can ignore that and continue to dps, etc, etc, etc. In an ideal world, this should result in achieving the same overall damage as melee, who have more dps downtime.

So using this logic a hunter or red RK should do more damage than a melee on a fight like boss 3 rem or shelob where you are always moving bit by bit almost non stop since they have inductions and aren't really mobile. Honestly tired of hearing "my class should do more damage cause im close to boss/mob and in more danger" blah blah blah." Im in more danger of taking a frontal cause I can't move and stay behind boss or SSG cant code frontals right and you have to be literally right behind the mob." Most melee class are heavy armour for a reason. Also by your logic yellow RKs should be best dps cause they have to be close to boss etc to hit their hardest hitting skills but look where they are at now. They are also light armour lul. Also no boss should have to be kited really in a raid, if it does it is probably poorly designed or game is just bad. So that argument is invalid too. People are whining about class balance and thats far from the issue. It starts from the ground up. Think about it. Llets keep supporting Lord of the Rings and making sure they get their little cut of the money!


Also heard a rumor quick shot is getting like a 60% damage buff. Sounds like yellow RK all over again with more available hard hitting options. Its pretty asinine. "A number of the longer secondary skill cooldowns have been reduced. Skills should generally feel more balanced in your rotations with more useful options available." Only if they thought of that when they messed with yellow RK LULW so dumb.

[Kander]

Also heard a rumor quick shot is getting like a 60% damage buff. Sounds like yellow RK all over again with more available hard hitting options. Its pretty asinine. "A number of the longer secondary skill cooldowns have been reduced. Skills should generally feel more balanced in your rotations with more useful options available." Only if they thought of that when they messed with yellow RK LULW so dumb.

Rather than the damage buff % itself on hunter dps this is what keeps me worried. They will change the damage balance between skills on a class rotation that kinda worked and made all skills useful, I am scared they might screw up so bad because of the lack of testing and turn hunter into a quick shot + pen shot + HS spam, rendering upshot, blood arrow, merciful shot, swift bow totally useless and a dps loss if used into rotation.

When you do a +20% damage on all skills like they did on champ it could be overtuned or undertuned but class will not be broken so there's not a lot of need of testing, when they change all skills damage differently and they alter massively the impact of different skills into rotation changing cooldowns and damage values... you at least need some kind of testing! I bet hunters will be competitive no matter what, but probably there will be some deep changes in rotation that is likely to be worse than it currently is.

[Strider5548]

You responded to me before saying that you do not Bow swap in combat, only for Burn Hot. That clearly indicates you are not maximising the DPS potential of the class you are playing. Which is why the following confuses me:



You said before (about two weeks ago?) that you don't weapon swap. In that case, I guess you are a quick study, and I will retract my statement, because last I checked, you said you do around 85k DPS.

Ok, understood, that was the case at the time. After they allowed us to trade motes and embers for SoE, I maxed out a second LI for swift bow + HS + DoTs and have increased my DPS from 85k to just over 100k on target dummy since then. No other major gear changes, just ran throne, did MT dailies, and embered all my Remm warden gear (I had a ton) and T3 gear that I had in vault since I was at ember cap.

[Sucamarto]

I didn't read the entire thread but any news on improving Strength of Morale?

[Starsmith]

Thanks for transcribing this. I'm not sure how I feel about all this. Looking at blue line, doe sthis mean that Scourging Blow will do roughly 30k damage but remove all bleeds? If that's the case I don't see why anyone would use it...if I have HS bleed on a target and they move close, it's not worth hitting a melee skill to remove that bleed and do less overall damage immediately.

Scourging Blow doesn't remove all bleeds *now*, just Barbed Arrow's, so I don't see why that would change. ATM, for me it does about 7,500 bonus damage in exchange for removing Barbed Arrow's 15,000 every 2s for 12s. It's currently such a bad skill I suspect it is actively detrimental to use it. I expect what it will do in the future is 30,000 - 45,000 bonus damage in exchange for cashing in Barbed Arrow's 12s bleed. Will it be worth running in to cash in? Maybe; Barbed Arrow and Scourging Blow's CDs aren't that high. Makes it a riskier move to run into melee but not pointless. I'd certainly think about it if I knew it might do as much damage as Barrage 1.

I like this. Scourging Blow is such a completely pointless waste of space right now.

[ddave]

Melee skills generating focus seems like a big change.

[apextr]

Champions.He made lots of discounts with us but i prefer this instead of nerfing as later like he did with rks.And to be honest i feel very underprivileged/unjust, (i dont know the right word my English are bad but you can get the point) and I will explain why.
Hunters is a class that had to much attention since middle Throne raid until a bit before burglars update.Fixed many core things and broke others.Champions before get those buffs didnt had any attention since Abyss raid at least 2 plus years ago.
Champions have many issues and asked about specific fixes plus a damage buff.We got only a damage buff even that our class have many core,deep issues for years.Hunters on the other hand for been competitive needed what champions got and i mean only a damage buff nothing else (at least for now).So Vastin instead of giving deeper attention to champions that were left behind for years he just gave a row buff that probably at next lvl cup will need another one again.For hunters tho that had so much attention the past 2/3 years he is making a proper balance pass by checking individually almost every skill in every line.So if you were champion you would feel the injustice here or not?
Anyway at least we got those buffs its something from nothing but not all classes that Vastin gave buffs are broken and also didnt had the same amount of attention thats for sure.

Ok, i'm gonna stop you here and people on this forum have already told you that numerous times you should stop ranting about champions on other class forums. Alas you continue you to do so anyways, this can only point towards your lack of ability to understand so I will NOT derail this thread any futher by replying any other message from you. Champ is in a good state atm you want more defensive ability for it? Good, more power to you man. Go make a post in the CHAMPION FORUMS and i'll support you then but stop trying leech attention from classes at every single thread. You can cap stats on champs much more easier than any other class plus you have built in 9,5k vit. So you just use 4 more vit essences as im sure you will be still well overcap on any stats if you any decent gear and that should put well about 300k hp which no other dps class has the luxury of atm.

Back to the main topic, it's good to see dev acknowledging the problems but buffing traps and melee damage is a bit of a meme but we'll see. Also people comparing melee vs ranged should also consider that hunter is an induction class so it is at a disadvantage at every fight you need to move constantly which is literally every fight in the current raid atm. So I don't think it should have a damage reduction over any other melee classes cuz it's ranged. I wouldn't take a hunter over a champ if champ still did slightly more damage in any of these fights except b1 maybe.

[Tatharil]

I find I can't get past my incredulity for this.
A good while back they body-slammed this with adding 3sec cooldown, effectively tripling CD (along with lowering initial damage while only partially fixing bleed issues).
In response several suggested/entreated for them to reverse this, or at least to enable LW to contribute to focus generation in exchange.

So what do they finally do? Possibly restoring initial damage back to where it already previously was, yes... but retaining the CD and then debilitatively doubling down by suplexing LW with making it actually cost 2 focus to use.

Almost, but sadly not quite entirely, unbelievable.

I'm aware of the unlikelihood of anyone else caring, as they've all long ago given up on Yellow ... and probably justifiably so.
I guess I'm just stubborn (and already an outlier in the player-base, what with playing only solo for 4+ years).

Ah well, just felt strongly about mentioning the ridiculousness of it.

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[EDITED for bit of spelling correction]

They need to increase lingering wound damage by 300% to justify the focuscost. All in all the yellow changes are totally missing the point. Like giving the car with broken wheels a new digital radio.
Rain of thorns doesn't need more damage. It's a cc skill. You don't use it for damage. Rain of thorns rank 2-4 are rubbish. Reduce CD or increase number of targets, that's a useful trait. Higher trap damage and lower CD... Yeah buff the most worthless and weakest form of cc and keep the better - distracting shot- useless. Add ractical de uff to PS.... Yeah give Red and blue more advantages over yellow... Hey why give useful debuffs to the debuffing line? It makes so much more sense to increase clunky damage skill, instead of improving the ways to apply debuffs.... Yes I'm being sarcastic.
Increase scouring blow cashout... Good, but wounded prey remains a bad joke? It was a damage loss before, cashing out lw bleeds for negligible damage... Now lingering wound costs focus this trait is even worse.