An Update: On Upcoming Changes to Hunters

[Zombie_Columbus]

I have a bit of an update on Blogs, shamelessly copied from Orion.

Some of you may have noticed that Kelsen put up a bundle of blogs two days ago http://my.lotro.com/user-1317796/ on his my.lotro.com page and Orion talked about them in a Champion thread. As you can see by that little snippet of information, we are going to attempt to do blogs for upcoming class changes. That being said, I am hoping to post the first iteration of my proposed changes to the Hunter up soon.

I want to give you something to chew on and speculate, postulate and discuss:

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.
Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.
Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

[JeanCarlo]

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.

Definitely got flare for dropping a bomb

[Yosoff]

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.
Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.

As a Focus-Burn style hunter, my brain is spinning right now. This could be awesome or this could be terrible. I can't wait for more information.

Will I still be able to fire off focus shots as fast as my power allows? Will I suddenly find myself wanting to always be in melee range due to some amazing changes to melee skills?

[JeanCarlo]

due to some amazing changes to melee skills?

Dual wielding 2H weapons!!!!

[Lithium777]

Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.
Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

Hunter's just got revamped, I'm not sure why you're changing the trait lines again.... no hunter uses melee, I have a feeling Huntsman will become the new unused line by everybody if you add a melee focus *you just took away bow and blade trait out of the game after all*

trapper of foes... focus more on traps itself? sure why not. But you just made this viable CC... not sure I understand but if this makes the line usable in most situations I am all for it, looking forward to info on ToF line.

[Finrandiras]

Can I please ask what is wrong with current setup?

Bowmaster - solo dps
Huntsman - raid dps
Trapper of Foes - cc

Orion gave the reasons behind upcoming champion changes, but there is no reason why to change recently changed hunter class, which at the moment is perceived by majority of hunters as balanced state.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

Interesting. After the recent update I wasn't expecting anything to change for Hunters until Isengard. I wonder what this will entail...

[d3sperad0]

Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.

oh plz i hope this wont nerf our lovely huntsman line with some useless melee buffs

[Galahadur]

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.
Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.
Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

Hum?

Didn't we just got a revision? Are we getting changed again?

I like where hunters are now.. please, stop! Choo! Go Away! I actually like Improved Fleetness.

[Finrandiras]

oh plz i hope this wont nerf our lovely huntsman line with some useless melee buffs

If you are willing to start playing as ranged/melee hybrid...

And to comment on the nerf to ToF:

In some cases it may be that our CC is better than the one of Loremasters.
But when you are raid leader you can pick between:
A) great CC and superior debuffs (lm)
B) superior CC and poor dps (hunt)

The LM with his debuffs bring definitely much much more to the table.

Personally I don't see the need to nerf our CC traitline that after years has become finally viable option.

[Cherep]

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.

Is it at the moment? There is NOT ONE single trait in Bowmaster set that benefits from S:S. Maybe the opposite would be better - introduce some changes to the traits that link S:S with the Bowmaster set?

Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

I can't understand - it's just been updated and I'm loving the new possibilities. Why would you want to get rid of CC? And what is 'everything else'?

Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.

Don't need any changes to melee skills, don't want any changes to melee skills, most people barely use them as it is. Unless of course you add some tasty debuffs...

[Cubi]

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.
Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.
Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

Oh lord, this is not gonna be good...Bowmaster is our dps line, why would it not be tied to Strength stance...
Bow and blade warrior, does this means they adding that trait back?

[Sirandilas]

Dual wielding 2H weapons!!!!

What about Dual Wield Crossbows?

[SoccerMike]

Not sure what to make of Bowmaster not being tied to S:S. Unless some of the traits are being changed to benefit other stances which might be a good thing.

Huntsman could be really good. A lot of people jump the gun but Huntsman is pure speed, so maybe while slotted Huntsman our melee skills give back power or add focus when used. I could think of several ways this would be nice, especially in the Moors.

Trapper never use it, so for me it would have to have a complete overhaul.

[Big_Scooter]

Oh lord, this is not gonna be good...Bowmaster is our dps line, why would it not be tied to Strength stance...
Bow and blade warrior, does this means they adding that trait back?

Because SS is only situationally useful in groups? Being forced to use SS for a dps trait line leads to too much aggro to maintain as high of DPS as possible. If you are on the forums, haven't you heard people bash hunters that sit in strength stance all day?

It should be a soloing/tanking/meleeing trait line that is tied to SS. The grouping dps line should be untied to any specific stance, or tied to one of the other two.

[lwk1138]

Like most folks I feel like we just got a pretty major update that balanced us out well, especially the changes to the bowmaster line. So I guess this is for RoI which is intriguing... so:

Bowmaster: No longer tied to Strength stance.
Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.
Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

Bowmaster: Are you going to tie it to another stance? Why not make it more favorable for Strength? (and if you do that make Beneath Care a TRUE aggro dump.)

Huntsman: NOOOOOO! No Melee! Support skills are OK like building focus, dazing, AR heal, etc! Why do you think we need to do melee damage? Especially for a trait set that encourages speedy bow skills? Why do I care if I can shoot faster if I'm going to be slowing my bow skills down with melee attacks. If you want to add melee damage add it to ToF line to offset the ranged nerf. Make ToF get a big boost to melee. Which leads to:

Trapper of foes: This is just confusing. I know the CC isn't great in some cases since the majority are roots/traps, allowing ranged and tact enemies to attack and heal. Easy fix would turn PS into mez instead of root. But what else would a hunter want to do? heal? Too vague to really comment.

I think most hunters would agree that the lines should look like this:

Bowmaster: Spike Damage (slower skills but bigger hits) RANGED TANKING and Solo
Huntsman: Group/raid DPS (faster skills better DPS/power/threat ratio and better mitigation avoidance) at the cost of ranged tanking
ToF: Crowd Control with slightly lower dps.

Thanks for letting us chime in on this, I'd love to continue the dialogue so we get good advancement for RoI!

[Murtallica]

I like the current state of the traitlines. But being a Hunter traited in the Huntsman line, I don't know if this is good or bad, as I currently like that it's now a focus and speed-oriented traitline that uses less power than the Bowmaster. The Trapper of Foes line is nice in its current state as well, as a viable CC line which is really fun to use in easy orc-filled instances, but it all depends on what everything else is, maybe we will get some nice debuffs?

[D3-Rook]

Im not sure why you would change ToF. I have for the first time seen "LFM need CC hunter or LM" in glff recently. Would seem a shame to change that. Possibly a touch more dps but please dont nerf the finally useful CC.

[JeanCarlo]

What about Dual Wield Crossbows?

O M G !

That would be like, cool! but... you know, cooler!

[Lithium777]

Because SS is only situationally useful in groups? Being forced to use SS for a dps trait line leads to too much aggro to maintain as high of DPS as possible. If you are on the forums, haven't you heard people bash hunters that sit in strength stance all day?.

this is mostly due to bad tanks, a good tank can hold agro just fine given 5 seconds at the start of the fight.

[Moonwalk_Into_Mordor]

I dislike posting off-topic and derailing threads, but I just can't help myself with this one...

You just revamped the Hunter class with the last update. Balanced a lot of things and made a useless traitline very useful for its purpose. It was an update very well done and I believe the vast majority of hunter players were pleased with the changes. Yet it seems you still think this class is in need of adjustments and have time to work on it. I hope the systems team feels the same about the Burglars, which got close to nothing with their "update" and still need some traitline revision instead of band-aid treatment.

[Lothran]

Huntsman: A true Bow and Blade warrior.

Okay, who is it at Turbine that keeps thinking any significant percentage of hunters are just dying to run in to melee range to play cheap-cousin-of-the-champ? heh...when we want to melee, we switch to our guards/wardens/champs/burgs/cappys. Don't need moar melee ability in this game. Just to clarify your player base's feelings on this particular topic, a poll might be illustrative.

Just trying to work out what you must be thinking, can only conlude you want to flip-flop the Bowmaster and Huntsman lines. Currently, BM is all about soloing, range tanking, etc -- times when you know you'll end up with aggro, or want to end up with aggro. Often means getting into melee situations (though you frequently just keep using ranged attacks regardless, save auto-attacks). Currently, Huntsman is about ranged dps in groups, riding below top aggro. Almost never intended to close to melee range with the mobs. So....you want Huntsman to be the melee (high aggro, mobs come running?) line while BM is the fully ranged (ride below the tank) line? Is that it? If so, is the flip-flop really needed? I mean, I get the names..."Bowmaster" would fit a precision stancee support/group DPS role better than "Huntsman" and "Huntsman" seems more appropriate to soloing (if not range tanking). Is that what it's all about, the names?

Trapper of Foes: Less crowd control, more of everything else.

Hmm...in a HUNTER'S world, there are only two things: dps, and crowd control. So if Trapper is going to be less cc, the "everything else" must be...MOAR DPS! Maybe even 30% more! To quote that funny champ friend of ours, we say OKAY!

(seriously, Trapper is good as it is, very useful when you need to cc for a group ... no idea what "everything else" could mean, if not dps ... surely you don't mean more poison removal or taxi service ....)

[RinkyTink]

Can we have dual wield crossbows AND shields??

[Lithium777]

surely you don't mean more poison removal or taxi service ....)

the cap stone will remove the induction off ports and make them usable in combat, it will also not give the people in range a choice if they can come. Trapper of Friends.

[slack_n_hash]

What about Dual Wield Crossbows?

Shot from the hip!