Let's start talking about hunters...

[PartherFar]

For a casual solo player such as myself, blue line hunter is great! I hope it continues to be great.

Yellow line as people have said lacks...something. Here's a thought - make yellow line for hunters function just like yellow line for brawlers. Let it be a trait line that blue and red can dip into for 1 pt. Fill up yellow line with utility skills, esp crowd control skills. Eliminate yellow line for hunter being a stand alone spec.

Thanks for your work, Orion!

Please do not eliminate the yellow line. It is the only line I play on the hunter. Also, do not eliminate the yellow line on any other class as has been suggested in the other threads requesting feedback.

I was never a fan of when they made the change to the the 3 lines. If you have to eliminate triat lines then eliminate them all and go back to no trait trees. One you eliminate one line then in a year eveybody will say the other triat line is useless and there is only one trait line to be played so why not eliminate it also.

Guardian was my favorite class when it launched until they made they move to the trait lines. Now the guardian sucks to play. I keep trying to play it but don't care for any of the lines, right now I find the yellow guardian the most enjoyable.

I solo mostly or play in 2 person groups. Just please when making changes please don't ruin the solo play or small group play for class adjustments for end game or raids. Also keep in mind that some of us are not max level so make sure the changes do not ruin the lower levels of a class.

[Michaleo]

As a Blue hunter, I will limit myself to the singular largest annoyance, which is the bizarre cooldown for Barrage. Introduced as a way to keep Blue hunters from competing with Red in raid DPS, the many other nerfs and adjustments since then have made it unnecessary.

There are already two mechanisms, power and focus, to limit spamming of a skill. Those are predictable and quick to reset when out of combat.

The (in practice) unpredictability of the penalty cooldown (15 seconds instead of 2) comes from the excessive time (17 seconds) after a Barrage 2 that will trigger Barrage 3 and the penalty cooldown.

For example, when questing, if you happen to run out of mobs after a Barrage 2 and you find more in that 17-second window, your first Barrage will be a Barrage 3 with the 15-second cooldown. You have to wait more than 17 seconds to have it go back to Barrage 1 with a 2-second cooldown.

Even the 15-second cooldown itself is inconvenient if you happen to end the fight with Barrage 3. As you go from fight to fight, you don't want to keep track of whether Barrage will be available at the start of a fight or how long the cooldown will be.

Do this experiment: Go back to the original behavior allowing Barrage 3 to repeat with a 2-second cooldown. How many can you actually do before focus and power run out? If too many, adjust the focus or power costs until it seems acceptable.

If you want to keep the penalty cooldown, reduce the window on Barrage 2 to trigger Barrage 3 from 17 to 6 seconds (as on Barrage 1). That way you are more likely to be back at Barrage 1 at the start of a fight.

As far as I know, this is the only cooldown in the game with this erratic behavior. I would be happy to see it go away.

[Carved]

I personally dislike how spammy red hunter is, with there being so many sources of -induction in the game; I don't feel like the class has a good flow at all.

People will be defensive about touching red right now, and rightfully so. It's in a passable state and performing really well in all content, and over the past few years there have been some disastrous class 'reworks'.
But for me, the Quick Shot spam is too much. Spam QS, hit a skill, spam some more QS, hit another skill, back to QS, and so on. It really ruins the class for me. I don't think there's any other induction class (freep or creep) that is quite this monotonous.

I don't really even have a proposed solution - scaling back some of the -induction buffs (with damage compensation) would probably help a little (they've kinda gotten out of control over time anyway), but my more specific problem is how centred around Quick Shot spam red line is, and that's gonna be a rat's nest to untangle. I'm certainly not advocating for the spec to become sluggish in any way, either.



As for blue and yellow, no idea. If one of them can be turned into an augmentation line to make the main spec better, I'm all for it.

[SSG_Orion]

Lots of great feedback here. I think the main issue that I am feeling with hunters is yellow line and how it doesn't seem to do much at all. I believe that this is where I am going to be focusing when I start to re-work the class. No timeline yet, but this is something that will definitely be happening.

[PartherFar]

Lots of great feedback here. I think the main issue that I am feeling with hunters is yellow line and how it doesn't seem to do much at all. I believe that this is where I am going to be focusing when I start to re-work the class. No timeline yet, but this is something that will definitely be happening.

I love the yellow line. Please do not eliminate it and make it a utility line.

Explosive Decoy - need more health to last longer when attacked. At level 20 if 2 creatures attack it is dead in a couple seconds so the threat draw doesn't even do much. Another option would be to allow remote detonation of the decoy for less damage than when exploding at 15 sec.

Explosive Arrow - I struggle using the ground target when in combat. Switch to a target with area of effect damage.

[Eckenbrand]

Lets talk about Hunters.

General skills

Passage of [Enemy] - Can we get this rolled into a single button that opens a 2nd prompt to pick which creature type you want to track, or perhaps expand on it into some sort of hunting log bestiary type action

Beneath Notice - For what it does, 5m is too long of a cooldown. Either a shorter cooldown or an actual aggro dump, also something better than a paltry power restore tacked on.

Campfire - I feel this needs some sort of buff to be useable in combat to further expand on Hunter utility.

Camouflage - I absolutely love the buff this gets from Hidden Stalker, but I also think that Blue and Yellow should get some sort of bonus on Camo as well. Perhaps Blue can move while under Camo but gets a -80% movement speed and Yellow gets automatic trap placement or all of their traps gain a bigger size when deployed from Camo or something like that

Swift Stroke & Agile Rejoinder - Any possibility of seeing these skills return?

Stances - I'm sure people will and do Stance Dance in combat for the swap buffs, like hopping back and forth between Precision and Strength for the Finesse and Crit buff, but for a lot of players (me included) it just seems like a lot of work going back and forth every 5 seconds if you want to keep those buffs up. I propose you reduce the swap buffs slightly and just make them permanent fixtures on the stances.

Blue Line

Earthborn/Strength of the Earth - The morale and power restore are frankly, pathetic. Currently, if I were actually using SotE, I would receive about 2200 morale returned for channeling for 5 seconds. My current total morale pool is over 200k. Stopping and having to channel a skill for 5 seconds to return 1% morale is not worth it. Either increase the healing returns dramatically or get rid of it. Replace the Earthborn milestone with something useful

Find The Path/Pathfinder - Nothing wrong with the skill itself, it's just that I keep finding it harder and harder to justify slotting 5 points in the skill to run a little faster when not in combat. Maybe move the fully upgraded Find The Path into the milestone slot that Earthborn currently occupies.

Volley - The removed induction proc needs some sort of more visual or audio cue. I have missed this proc or used it on a Quickshot since the only indication is the buff you get that appears to be a Wound.

Strong Draw - I've always thought this and Fast Draw should be swapped. I've also thought that tying Fast Draw to Quickshot with a cooldown was kind of silly. Do you even get a net gain on time if you use 3 stacks to reduce the induction on say Heartseeker?

Fleetness - I don't think Fleetness requires 2 milestones, can we just get that rolled into one and a new milestone? Can we also just get the speed buff from Fleetness as long as combat persists?


Red Line

I honestly can't find much problem with Red Line. It's very solid. Maybe the cost of Rain of Arrows needs to be reduced slightly?

Yellow Line

I really don't play around with Yellow a lot, but there are 2 things in particular

Strong Intimidation - Tying one milestone to one skill that probably won't get used much seems like a waste.

Explosive Arrow - Making this a ground target skill seems unnecessary.


That's all I got for now.

[Tatharil]

Addition to yellow capstone the one trap: underwhelming to me. Piercing trap with bit higher damage, but no debuff.

Suggestion: add debuff or apply all trapdebuffs or turn it into an aoe mezz like bane flare. When triggered it casts a bane flare and mezzes up to 5 foes

[SkyWarpPro]

I am a Blue Hunter, because I love the mobility. In the days gone by when the hunter couldn't kill things, running in circles was about the only way to survive. Now That is not so much the case, but I am sure I have bad habits that still exist.

I do not use the following:
Quick Shot Focus
Pathfinder
Strength of the Earth
Rapid Fire

I agree that Yellow is not really a great choice. But honestly, I don't know how anyone can play red either with all the stationary requirements.

The biggest suggestion I have for the Hunter though, I think would benefit ALL other groups too.

We need a UI addition where we can access all our Travel Skills in one place.

Right now we have to do one of the following:
1. Use up ALL the skill slots with travel skills
2. Dig through a bunch of menus to get to them
3. Install some sort of plugin

None of these are ideal.

If we had a easy to use menu or something, not only could we save the skill slot space, but you could also use the system to possibly make more money by including skills we don't have yet or maps to places we don't have skills too, with the mithril purchase options similar to the horse stable routes.

This would significantly help Wardens and Hunters both, but also everyone else that likes to have all their travel skills in an easy to get place. Honestly, this would be my biggest request for LOTRO in general. A new UI option for Travel Skills, milestones, and maps!

[Belnavar]

A few things off the top of my head:

1. Yellow line. I absolutely love the concept of yellow line, but the reality is that red-line is the best for most content, and blue is good for things like deeds. Yellow just isn't viable. A true CC/debuff line that could rival LM or Burg would be wonderful, but I think it would require a complete overhaul to achieve this. The simpler, perhaps more elgant, solution is to copy what came with Brawler and is now being done to Minstrel and make yellow just a utility line. It'll require a fair bit of adjusting of traits, and probably needs a few new, universal ones (like the existing Survival Gear trait), but I'd love to able to finally experience some of yellow's gameplay in red or blue without feeling like I'm being penalised for doing so. Some more debuffs there would be nice too. Pathfinder in Blue should be a utility trait in a new yellow utility line, imo.

2. Stances. It seems like Endurance is always the way to go, no matter what. I remember a time when we would swap stances more, depending on the content (when we had a proper threat system, for example). I think part of the solution here is to change the activation bonuses from ratings to % buffs or debuffs. For example, Strength Stance should grant a +10% Ranged Damage buff to the Hunter, while Precision Stance should grant a +5% Ranged Crit Chance buff. Combined with their existing 5s cooldown, this should make it more desirable to swap stances for those buffs (and, I think, achieve the original aim of those activation bonuses). Endurance, meanwhile, needs a complete rework. Power cost just isn't an issue now, so anything power-related is outdated. Parry and Evade are also largely useless now, as bosses (and maybe instance/raid mobs?) bypass BPE. This stance could be made viable by being a true survival stance. For example, on activation it could apply a buff of -10% incoming damage, or a bubble. It could also apply a Heal over Time so long as you stay in the stance. I can see many occasions where this would be useful, when, for example, you overpull, your Blood Arrow is on cooldown, etc. Combined with its existing buff to Quick Shot (giving a heal), this would make it a true "Endurance" stance.

3. Quick Shot. Ah, I love the skill, but Hunter has become a class ot two skills. Quick Shot endlessly until you have 9 Focus, then use Upsot, and Quick Shot endlessly until Upshot is off cooldown. Sure, we throw in a Heartseeker every now and then too, but the lack of cooldown on Quick Shot means we spam it endlessly and don't even touch half of our other skills. Barbed Arrow needs to have its induction halved to match Quick Shot, and Quick Shot probably needs to have a cooldown to match Barbed Arrow (or at least some kind of cooldown). It's just really boring gameplay to have so many skills and use so few of them.

4. Purge Posion. This needs to be useable while moving. Many other classes can do this with their status effect removal skills.

5. Cry of the Hunter. The bubble is really paltry at our current morale pools. It's often gone in a single hit.

6. Corruption Removal. Blood Arrow is the ranged corruption removal skill, but the problem is we need to save it to heal ourselves, or it's already on cooldown. Dazing Blow is the melee corruption removal skill, but we're almost never in melee range. Hunter arguably needs a new corruption removal skill, or this needs to be moved to a different ranged skill.

7. Bard's Arrow and Distracting Shot. Because of the 1s induction, these are less useful, as you'll already be taking damage before they go off -- or the induction will keep getting interrupted/knocked back. This should have no induction, so they can be used on the fly to lock down a target if the Hunter overpulls.

8. Pinning Shot. This needs a duration increase to at least 10s to be useful. Thankfully it doesn't have an induction.

9. Burn Hot. The animation for this always felt a little long to me, so that a few seconds of the buff are already eaten up before I can get my first shot off.

10. Elf Racial. This is more a criticism of the Racial Traits than anything, but having a single race with a +5% Bow Damage trait makes it the one and only way to go for Hunter. I'd love to see a complete rework of Racial Traits to make things more universal, so that you can play the race you want to play, instead of feeling like you have to play a certain way to get the most out of your class. I know some players who used to make all Men, for example, for the big heal (which is now rather paltry).

-Bel

[Belnavar]

A few more points:

11. Plant Feet. This red-line trait is useless (and I know no one who traits it), because Evade is generally useless. Change this to +5% Phys/Tact Mitigation and it might actually be attractive.

12. Moving Target. The blue-line equivalent of the above. Again, this needs to change from Evade to Mitigation.

13. Strength of the Earth. Generally useless, as power is no longer a concern for most classes in most situations. It's even worse because it's a channel skill. At the very least, this should be a simple power over time skill.

-Bel

[hfe]

I also only play yellow line hunter, it's perhaps not the meta, but it's fun and versatile with its improved survivability and traps. I agree that explosive arrow is useless and could see an upgrade. Other than that? Perhaps make debuffs usefull, or crowd control needed --- instead of making yellow a candy shop for turrets.

[Arnenna]

Not much time as on my way out to work, but for now . . . .

get rid of the root on purge poison. The skill is way too cumbersome to use. In a tight spot, using this skill can result in defeat and it's better to try to out-heal the dot (not always successfully).

[hfe]

I also only play yellow line hunter, it's perhaps not the meta, but it's fun and versatile with its improved survivability and traps. I agree that explosive arrow is useless and could see an upgrade. Other than that? Perhaps make debuffs usefull, or crowd control needed --- instead of making yellow a candy shop for turrets.

Expanding a bit on this:

I don't think secondary roles of one class should compete with primary roles of other classes.

That said, yellow hunter shouldn't rival LM or Burglars in their main role. Just having something, fun, playable, and unique is well enough to enjoy the game --- and that this yellow line is with its traps, and cc, albeit a bit awkward sometimes with trap placement.

My personal roleplay motive for playing the yellow hunter and playing it to level 130, is that I wanted to play a skirmisher, a melee-ranged fighter. The yellow warden of course fits this description, but it's rather awkward to play with the lag and gambits, and also it's more melee oriented than the yellow hunter.

[Eckenbrand]

Expanding a bit on this:

I don't think secondary roles of one class should compete with primary roles of other classes.

That said, yellow hunter shouldn't rival LM or Burglars in their main role. Just having something, fun, playable, and unique is well enough to enjoy the game --- and that this yellow line is with its traps, and cc, albeit a bit awkward sometimes with trap placement.

My personal roleplay motive for playing the yellow hunter and playing it to level 130, is that I wanted to play a skirmisher, a melee-ranged fighter. The yellow warden of course fits this description, but it's rather awkward to play with the lag and gambits, and also it's more melee oriented than the yellow hunter.

The Hunter in me says "Yeah, make Burgs do less damage/Hunters more damage, they shouldn't be competing for our DPS slot, they're a support class"

But if we parse every class down like that, there would be no Champion, Captain, or Beorning tanks. Wardens and Guardians would only have their tanking line.

I honestly think it would be acceptable if Hunters, traited Yellow, could CC just as well as a Yellow Burg or LM, considering Red Burgs and LMs are competitive with Hunter DPS.

[SerowLOTRO]

I hope Hunters get the Brawler treatment. I would like to keep Red (high damage low mobility DPS role) and Yellow (medium damage high mobility Support role). Turn Blue into the shared tree, so that both Red and Yellow can get generic damage and survivability boosts.

[Eckenbrand]

I hope Hunters get the Brawler treatment. I would like to keep Red (high damage low mobility DPS role) and Yellow (medium damage high mobility Support role). Turn Blue into the shared tree, so that both Red and Yellow can get generic damage and survivability boosts.

I respectfully disagree. Red or Yellow should be the shared tree.

[Edlenn]

I have a different opinion on this matter. Been playing a hunter since 2010, been through bad years and good. Frankly I say leave the class alone, it's in a pretty good place. Don't improve it, don't fix it, just leave it. One person's opinion.

[Baredur]

One change I would like to see is replacing Desperate Flight with an actual in-combat sprint. Nothing too crazy but something with a hefty CD that could be used to either chase down or run from foes now and then.

[MaxHunter]

Purge Poison: please remove that autostun.

[Spydre]

I agree with the post about Blood Arrow being both heal and corruption removal and that they should be separated.
I would love for the Purge Poison skill to be an instant and not root you to the space.

I never got use to playing the Blue line. When it first came out I expected it to function like WoW hunters where you could kite, jump-flick-fire, and keep running. It always felt like the animations were lagging and clunky.
Never saw a use for Yellow line. It's definitely niche.

[GozmitJosh]

I mostly play red hunter just for the damage, i dont mind being stationary, i never trait upshot and put my points into heart seeker, bleeds, and dip into the blue line a bit instead

I only really use the blue line when im deeding so i can just run around and fire at everything

yellow line i love the traps being mobile but the amount of damage is no match for red line that i dont trait it unless i really need to keep a certain mob at bay because they might have some cheap skill or effect, mostly the reflect damage, if i critical'd with one of my skills there goes 3/4 of my morale.

I'd like to see the yellow line become the utility/trap line that compliments either the red of blue line

also making purge poison be able to be used while moving regardless of what line you choose. Remove Strength of the Earth or significantly improve the amount of morale that it heals you with, the amount of time it will take to use that skill and the little amount of morale it heals you, 1 hit from a mob and im at less morale than when i started.

Also having something that can better organize all the guide skills.

[JMakin]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

Let me start by saying that I don't post a lot on the forums, but I do read them, and I do appreciate this type of exchange! I am posting from my second account, so don't be mislead by my Join Date.

To put things in perspective: My hunter is my main. I do not really play any other class due to time constraints. That said, I do play quite a bit (around 35 to 40 hours a week on average). I log in daily. I only play endgame content. I do not PvP. I actually have two hunters to work around loot IDs. I am a "completionist", trying to complete all deeds. I have played since Beta, and I have had to take personal break between level 65 and 130, with the occasional login, but not playing regularly during that time.

Hunter to me is, was and always will be a DPS class. It is the only true ranged physical DPS class in the game.

Let's take a look at the various trees:

Red
To me, this line is especially important for endgame/raids, because it focuses on highest DPS. Let's be brutally honest: If a class does not deliver high (or rather highest) DPS, the class is being rejected (today: e.g. RKs). This line should always focus on how to deliver the highest DPS possible for the hunter class. It's the stationary, high DPS trait line, with max range.

Today, this line is in really good shape. Nothing (!!!), also for the sake of resource efficiency, needs to be changed here. You should spend your time on blue and especially yellow. There is one exception: the capstone skill "Plant Feet". This skill is, for a capstone skill, utterly useless and absolutely needs a change. If you were to run a reporting on how many endgame hunters actually spend points here, the result must be 0%. Let's not make things complicated: Simply change it to give it a decent ranged damage bonus instead of evade. Fixed!

Blue
To me personally, blue hunter is not in a bad spot. I use it to run solo, landscape content, with moderate range. I heard it's also being used in PvP due to its mobility, which is exactly what this line is about. It does not need a drastic change, but it could use some love. Today, it is mainly being used to be combined with the red line, in order to increase damage (Impact Arrows, Strong Draw, Split Shot, QS Focus, Blood Arrow, Exsanguinate, Barbed Fury) and survivability (Blood Arrow, Press Onwards).

Skills/traits that are useless or do not scale are:

• Bow of the Righteous - unless power consumption becomes a valid component again, it will remain useless
• Strength of the Earth - it does not fit in with the mobility aspect of this line, and the morale restoration from Earthborn does not scale, and power restauration is useless (today)
• Shot Through the Heart - does not scale, i.e. does not make an impact enough to make it worth spending points in. Needs a decent bump!
• Volley - needs some love, see below

So the above skills can be enhanced or possibly replaced with something new.

• Depending on if power consumption becomes a valid component of the game again, Bow of the Righteous and Strength of the Earth simply need to scale.
• I would make Strength of the Earth a skill that can be used while moving, and make it scale properly. I guess the idea would be to leave it on a 90s cooldown, and have it restore around 30% of the power a hunter would consume in these 90 seconds, so that power pots and other means of restoring power (Intent Concentration, Bow of the Righteous, also skills from other classes) still need to be used to manage the hunter's power pool.
• Bow of the Righteous simply needs to scale, or it could be replaced by something new. I find it obsolete to be honest. I guess at the time the idea was to use more focus skills in blue, which also meant higher power consumption. That is somewhat negligible, today. I don't have an idea of what to replace it with at the moment to be honest, but since it is buried quite deep in the blue line, it should be something decent.
• Shot Through the Heart simply needs a decent damage boost. The boost needs to be significant, and it needs to be transparent (i.e. +10% damage on targets with bleeds on them). Could be a ranked approach, too.
• Volley - the problem is that if it procs and your next skill in your rotation is a QS, it's basically wasted. It should proc a buff/skill (like Blood Arrow with Exsanguinate) to be used within a certain timeframe (let's say 5 seconds), because it can remove the induction of Heart seeker, which is probably the only skill it would be used for, unless HS is on cooldown, then it would either be Split Shot or Swift Bow.

Yellow
I have never really played yellow line. I have never tried it. It simply is too far away from what I expect from a hunter. I think this is the perfect line to use as a shared line.

My idea of this line is to be a sort of "buff" line. There are a few examples in there today already that make it useful, like Natural Abstracts or Survival Gear. These are the ones being used in combination with the red line, because they are on the top tier and are available even with zero points spent in yellow, which is kind of the idea of a shared tree/line.

For me, the most important thing is that hunters become a viable choice as a group/raid member when it comes to supporting the group. Today, the only real support we provide is with Improved Penetrating Shot, Hemorrhaging Shot and Archer's Mark, but the benefit for the group is quite poor. By improving the yellow, shared line, hunters should be able to buff the group in a way that at least one hunter should always be part of a raid (which should be the case for any class, ideally). I hear this about other classes sometimes. Although the class itself would not be a preferred class for that particular content, it is still part of the line-up because of its utility. Hunters don't have this today, and this needs to change! Again, this is IMO the most important part of the yellow/shared tree line revamp!

I am not going to go into the specifics here (I might edit this post later on after some brainstorming), but a few things come to mind:

Decoy - Make it a force taunt for a short duration, in the sense of: the tank is down, and while we rezz, hunter decoy to the rescue (similar to LM bear taunt)! Make it a ground-targeted ranged skill.
Tripwire - Raise the chance of this being a knock down. Make it a ground-targeted ranged skill.
Traps - Remove damage from traps, and add more buffs instead (+ incoming damage, -mitigations, etc.). Please make these ground-targeted ranged skills as well!

I mean of all this needs to be in moderation, and relative to what other classes can do. I do not expect the hunter to replace a LM!

More buffs in yellow could be used to improve hunter damage. As an example: True Shot from the red line should really be in yellow/shared, because it helps the whole group.

Also, please move hunter away from being a melee class. We need to move already enough due to the game content (moving out of puddles, moving inside banners, getting up close for buffs, etc.). There is no reason why hunters should be in any shape or form a melee class. The only situation in which I use a melee skill today is Improved Dazing Blow to remove a corruption, or Cry of the Hunters for interrupts if Blindside is on cd, but it's quite rare, and can be removed completely if you ask me.

Some general items
Burn Hot - Please, please, please, please make this an immediate skill, without animation. It's just so annoying to lose DPS having to sidestep/use another immediate skill to shorten the animation.
Purge Poison - Please shorten/remove the animation/stuck part. Make it like for wardens/pots, usable while moving, otherwise it will penalize blue line.
Cry of the hunter - The morale bubble could use a little bump. Make it morale based (like 10%). Could be something that can be improved by ranks from e.g. blue line, maybe replace it with one of the useless skills we have in there today.
Pen Shot - I would vote for increasing the duration of pen shot debuff, and give it a cooldown as well. Having to press it every 10 seconds is just meh. Can we make this 30 seconds please, or 20 at least?
Camp Fire - Please give us more slots for camp fires! Middle Earth is a beautiful, but very large area. Having just one camp fire location is almost useless.
Do we still need stances? I think these can be removed from the class. If not, these need to be revamped.

That is all I can think of right now. I generally like the hunter as it is right now! Do not reinvent the wheel here. I obviously do not expect all of the above changes to be implemented. These are just ideas. I will edit this post or create a new one when new/more ideas come to mind!

Thank you for listening (to me ;-D )! Have fun improving the class, but please don't break it. I like the way it is right now...

[Hastran]

I fully agree that Purge Poison should be useable on the move.

I would like to see the Find the Path skill removed from the Blue tree: Out of Combat run speed just isn't worth points in Blue Line much less a Red or yellow dipping into Blue at 2 points for each 3% . Even if maxed Bears and Wardens are as fast or faster and it costs them no points. High Elves get +10% run speed so a Hunter is barely faster unless they pour points into Find the Path boosts.

On a different note I would to see Hunters get +5% Spear Damage. As there is no Racial trait for Spear damage it would not be an increase in power. Also, Hunters and Spears are just a natural combination, but most everyone uses the Racial Trait Weapon (swords, axes, clubs). It would really fit with the RP of the Class.

Yellow line either needs work or to become a Utility Line as has been suggested.

Capstone skills previously mentioned need replacing and a Channeled Healing skill for Blue line makes no sense even if the Heal was worthwhile (which it is not).

Take away the Elf Bow damage Racial trait and Elves cease to be played as everyone shifts to High Elves which have better animations and racial traits (excluding +5% Bow damage). I admit I would want a High Elven hunter just for the Roll out of a fall...it is cool.

[Tatharil]

Yellow line either needs work or to become a Utility Line as has been suggested.

If yellow was degraded to being an utility line like brawler or butchered minstrel, it would save me lots of free time. Helms deep ruined LM fun(flanking, wind lore, melee damage), yellow hunter was my refuge after that, but due to messed up red changes yellow became worse and worse. Hoping for a yellow hunter rework is what kept me from deinstalling lotro despite the bad changes (Ash and cash driven content, hobbit wizards and such...)

[Guidorocker]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Hunter changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our ranged combatant and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

ARMOR!

I'm scrambling to try to find HUNTER worthy armor.
Several of my other characters were fighter class, and mages/runemaster, loremaster, and haven't played through a high level HUNTER before.

Trying to find good looking hunter armor is hard.
Robes? no.
Chain link? no.
Hauberks? no... the one that does look good is the Green Chest piece of the Armor of the Eorlingas (which came on the pre-order of the Rise of Isengard). That was on what is now my wife's character. MY Characters were started after the Isengard expansion on a newly created account (so we can both play together), so is there any chance for me to own this armor???