By Skurridizo
Hello! I'm Skurridizo. Some of you may already know me from the Hunter guides I have made for Turtle WoW. This will be a long message explaining all my decisions deeply, if you want a short version just scroll down to the next message in which I made a short resume.
Having raided weekly with up to four different Hunters, covering all the possible Hunter playstyles, I have gained a considerable amount of experience and a broad perspective of the class. This includes both progression content and speedrunning, which I believe gives me a good position to evaluate the current state of the Hunter.
The purpose of this post is not to complain or simply ask for buffs.
My goal is to highlight things that currently do not work particularly well and propose some quality-of-life improvements. The final decision regarding buffs or nerfs should always belong to the developers and should not be influenced by community pressure.
There are going to be many different proposed changes in this post, each accompanied by possible solutions. I am certainly not suggesting that everything should suddenly be implemented overnight. However, I would like the development team to be aware of the different issues that exist, the possible improvements that could be made, and the general direction I believe the class could take.
I am also aware that many people play Hunter and that many unrealistic or absurd suggestions have been made over the years. I will try to be much more conservative with my proposals and focus on changes that I believe could realistically be implemented.
This will be a long post, so let's get started.
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1. Coin Shop and Hunter Quality of Life
Ammunition and Repair Bots
There is currently a Repair Bot available for 200 Coins that sells reagents for every class, but it does not sell arrows. Meanwhile, Hunters have a separate reagent vendor that only sells arrows and cannot repair equipment, despite costing the same 200 Coins.
There is no clear reason for this separation.
Proposed change:
Either the Repair Bot should also sell arrows, or the Hunter ammunition vendor should also be able to repair equipment.
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Hunter-specific Coin Shop Gameplay Advantages
There are currently several Coin Shop purchases that directly affect Hunter gameplay.
Excluding Druid skins, Hunter is essentially the only class with multiple class-specific Coin Shop purchases that can directly affect raid performance:
- The ammunition vendor.
- The portable stable, Caretaker Brambleclaw, for 200 Coins.
- Glyph of the Beastkeeper, which increases stable capacity from 4 to 5 pets for 300 Coins.
Imagine if Paladins could only store three equipment sets in their bank, plus the one they were currently wearing, for a total of four sets. Then imagine that the only way to gain one additional slot was by spending 300 Coins.
Different situations require different pets. There is no single pet that is best for every situation, and there is certainly no single pet that is optimal for an entire raid.
I understand that the server needs monetisation, and I understand why Turtle WoW chose to monetise this feature. However, increasing stable capacity was something Blizzard eventually implemented because it became necessary for Hunters to properly manage the class at maximum performance.
It does not make much sense to allow Hunters to change their talents while preventing them from changing the pet required for the new build. This becomes increasingly restrictive during late-game content.
Proposed change:
Add a portable stable item that can be obtained through a trainer with a 10-minute cooldown, similar to the Goblin Brainwasher Device.
The Coin Shop version could continue functioning as it currently does, but the 1-minute debuff after changing pets should be removed. Instead, the item should simply be unusable while in combat.
This would prevent the well-known Gorilla exploit.
Alternatively, removing Thunderstomp from Gorillas would also eliminate the possibility of exploiting pet swapping in combat.
In addition, Hunter stable capacity should naturally receive at least +1 additional slot, while Glyph of the Beastkeeper should provide something more significant, perhaps +3 additional slots.
This would increase the current capacity of four pets to a possible total of eight, although I personally believe even more slots would still be useful.
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2. Hunter Scaling and Late-Game Problems
Scaling must not break low-level Hunter
Before discussing scaling, it is important to remember something: Hunter is one of the strongest classes while leveling and in the 10–19, 20–29 and 30–39 battleground brackets.
Any change made to Hunter scaling must therefore be carefully designed to avoid accidentally breaking the class at lower levels.
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Ranged Weapon Scaling
Hunter has some of the best DPS during the early stages of the game, including early raid content.
Because of pets, the way ranged weapons work, and the modifications made to the Survival tree, Hunters can achieve high base damage with relatively little equipment.
However, as other classes obtain better gear, Hunter scaling begins to fall behind unless the player is using Survival and taking advantage of additional consumables, buffs and melee weapon scaling.
Hunter abilities scale with the base damage of the weapon, which is why slow weapons with high damage are generally preferred.
This also synergises with ammunition. Because arrows add DPS rather than a fixed amount of damage, slower weapons gain more actual damage from the same ammunition.
For example, one of the strongest bows available in Turtle WoW, Rain of Spiders from Mephistroth in Kara40, has 144–255 damage with a speed of 3.10, resulting in 64.4 DPS.
Meanwhile, Might of Menethil, generally considered one of the strongest two-handed weapons from Naxxramas, has 289–435 damage with a speed of 3.80, resulting in 95.3 DPS.
Even the best ammunition currently available, Doomshot arrows from LBRS, only adds +20 DPS. With a 3.10-speed weapon, this translates into approximately +62 damage to both the minimum and maximum weapon damage.
Even after adding this ammunition, the bow still falls significantly behind Might of Menethil.
In general, from the Blackwing Lair crossbow Ashjre'thul, Crossbow of Smiting onwards, ranged weapons begin to lose power compared to melee weapons.
Proposed change:
Rebalance the damage values of all ranged weapons from AQ40 onwards.
The weapons could maintain approximately the same DPS while becoming 0.1 seconds slower, increasing their base damage.
In addition, stronger ammunition should be introduced beyond the current LBRS Doomshot arrows.
These arrows could be crafted through the Survival profession using a recipe obtained from raid content.
Different ammunition types could also exist, such as:
- Arrows with additional damage against Undead.
- Arrows with additional damage against Demons.
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Melee Attack Power Buffs vs Ranged Attack Power
Many raid buffs and consumables affect Melee Attack Power but not Ranged Attack Power.
Examples include:
- Blessing of Might.
- Winterfall Firewater.
- Strength-based buffs and consumables.
On top of this, Windfury Totem cannot be used with a bow.
As long as this remains the case, ranged Hunter builds will naturally benefit from fewer raid buffs and consumables than melee-oriented builds.
This is one of the reasons why Survival remains the dominant late-game Hunter specialization.
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3. Pet Problems and Pet Diversity
The next major issue is related to Hunter pets.
I will try to summarise this section because the subject is quite extensive, and I imagine that many players are not fully aware of the current situation.
In Classic, pets have always had modifiers affecting their attack, health and armour.
Among these, the attack modifier is generally the most important because it directly affects the physical attacks made by the pet.
These modifiers range from approximately -10% to +10%.
In Vanilla, Cats were generally the obvious choice because they had a +10% damage modifier and more useful abilities than the other pet family with a similar modifier, Raptors.
Other niche pets, such as Owls or Wind Serpents, were sometimes used because of their +7% damage modifier combined with their specific abilities.
In Classic Vanilla, most pets learned Bite, while only a few could learn Claw. Because Claw was more exclusive, it was generally the stronger ability.
Turtle WoW introduced many changes to the pet system.
Among them:
- Bite is now generally stronger than Claw.
- Claw has become almost obsolete.
- The Cobra/Serpent was introduced with a +13.5% attack modifier.
- Every pet family received a characteristic ability.
However, in terms of DPS, there are currently only three pet families that can realistically be considered:
- Raptor, because it has an armour-ignoring bleed that scales with 15% of Attack Power.
- Scorpion, because its poison is the strongest DPS ability during long fights when playing Beast Mastery.
- Wind Serpent, for enemies immune to poison and/or bleed effects.
It is unfortunate that so much potentially interesting content remains unused.
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Special Pet Families
Proposed change:
Create special pet families capable of learning multiple characteristic abilities from other families.
Alternatively, one family could be capable of learning every ability.
The following examples reuse the Cobra's total modifier distribution as a reference point.
Chimera
- Health: +5.5%
- Damage: +10%
- Armour: +5%
- Health: +9.5%
- Damage: +10%
- Armour: +0%
- Health: +13.5%
- Damage: +0%
- Armour: +6%
- Health: +6%
- Damage: +13.5%
- Armour: +0%
This is not because pets cannot theoretically learn more abilities, but because four is currently the natural limitation of the pet system.
The idea would therefore be to provide each special family with a larger pool of possible abilities while allowing the player to choose which four abilities to use.
Generic abilities
All of these pets would be able to learn:
- Bite.
- Claw.
- Cower.
- Dash.
No restrictions. It could learn every available characteristic pet ability.
The idea would be to create a fully flexible pet capable of experimenting with unusual combinations.
Hydra
- Strider Presence.
- Furious Howl.
- Pollen Burst.
- Death Roll.
- Web.
- Savage Rend.
- Lightning Breath.
- Roar of Fortitude.
- Poison Spit.
- Scorpid Poison.
- Thunderstomp.
- Bubble Barrier.
- Grace.
- Shell Shield.
- Screech.
- Roar of Fortitude.
- Pollen Burst.
- Charge.
- Poison Spit.
- Scorpid Poison.
- Lightning Breath.
- Savage Rend.
- Packleader.
- Charge.
- Prowl.
These pets could be obtained through a level 60 quest that requires significant Hunter progression.
For example, the requirement could involve learning every pet ability at maximum rank, or even collecting every available rank of pet abilities.
This would also partially solve the Hunter stable slot problem while allowing every player to build their own pet strategy.
Players could choose between builds focused on utility, survivability, crowd control or pure DPS.
The intended identities would be:
- Chimera: Complete flexibility and experimentation.
- Hydra: Crowd control and PvP.
- Worm: Tanking and auras.
- Silithid: Pure DPS.
Pet Abilities That Need a Rework or Buff
Grace currently provides +30% dodge for 12 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown.
The ability is extremely difficult to justify without another mechanic that supports it.
Bubble Barrier absorbs 335 damage. When the barrier breaks or expires, it deals 72–85 Frost damage to enemies within 10 yards.
Its scaling is currently extremely poor.
Shell Shield reduces all damage taken by the pet by 50%, but increases the time between pet attacks by 35%. It lasts 12 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.
In Classic, pet threat is generated primarily by attacking. Reducing attack speed therefore works against the idea of using the pet as a tank.
I have also previously proposed several changes for abilities that are currently too weak or have almost no practical use.
Proposed changes:
- Make Claw hit up to 3 targets.
- Change Claw's Attack Power scaling from 1 damage per 42 AP to 1 damage per 35 AP.
- Reduce Thunderstomp's cooldown from 40 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Increase Thunderstomp's Spell Power scaling from 0.21 to 0.3.
- Reduce Roar of Fortitude's cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.
- Reduce Screech's cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
Dismiss Pet and Happiness
Another change introduced in Turtle WoW is that casting Dismiss Pet causes the pet to lose 51 happiness.
This can be verified through the Combat Log.
The change was apparently introduced for roleplaying purposes, but it does not make much sense to penalise the player for casting a five-second spell when the player can simply send the pet more than 100 yards away and allow it to disappear due to distance without losing any happiness.
This is an unnecessary penalty that can be bypassed by simply using another method.
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4. Beast Mastery
Once the intrinsic problems of pets have been discussed, the natural next step is to move to the Beast Mastery talent tree.
Perhaps in the future, additional changes could allow a Beast Mastery off-tank playstyle focused on increasing pet threat and resistance while using Aspect of the Beast.
At the moment, Aspect of the Beast is extremely situational. Its primary effect is preventing other Hunters from detecting you while tracking humanoids.
For now, however, I will leave the off-tank concept aside and focus on the talents that currently feel weak or lack a meaningful purpose.
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Improved Eyes of the Beast, Improved Revive Pet and Improved Mend Pet
There is a group of three talents that could have much better synergy with each other but are currently extremely situational:
- Improved Eyes of the Beast.
- Improved Revive Pet.
- Improved Mend Pet.
The problem is that using the ability requires a two-second cast, making it uncomfortable to use.
Improved Revive Pet has another problem: reviving the pet does not restore its happiness.
Because of this, the talent is rarely useful, even for Beast Mastery players while leveling.
In most situations, preventing the pet from dying is more valuable than investing points into improving its resurrection.
Mend Pet has several issues.
It costs 480 mana, channels for up to five seconds, heals up to 1225 health and only has a range of 25 yards.
In many situations, particularly when playing at range, the pet will be more than 30 yards away.
Casting Mend Pet therefore results in a significant DPS loss for a relatively small heal with a very high mana cost.
Proposed changes:
- Improved Eyes of the Beast: Also increases the attack range of the pet by +1 yard per point, up to a maximum of 2 yards.
- Improved Revive Pet: Increases the range of Mend Pet by +10 yards per point. This should not stack with other similar range increases, such as the Tier 1 bonus.
- Improved Mend Pet: While channeling Mend Pet, activates the +15% / +30% damage effect from Improved Eyes of the Beast.
[hr]
Bestial Discipline
Bestial Discipline is currently a very weak talent.
In later expansions, the talent provided +100% energy regeneration, increasing pet energy regeneration from +25 every four seconds to +50 every four seconds. Other mechanics also allowed pets to gain energy when landing critical strikes.
In the current version, Bestial Discipline only provides 2/5 additional energy.
It also reduces the cooldown of the pet's characteristic ability by 10/20%, which is usually irrelevant and can even be detrimental in some cases, such as the Cobra.
With the exception of Bears and Wolves, the cooldown reduction has very little practical impact.
Many pets, however, would benefit significantly from being able to spend energy more aggressively.
Proposed change:
Increase the energy regeneration bonus to:
- +5 energy at rank 1.
- +10 energy at rank 2.
Currently, even with full Kara40 Best-in-Slot gear, Claw can deal approximately 75 damage to a single target.
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Frenzy
In the past, I also proposed several smaller changes to other talents, such as reducing the number of points required or moving the movement speed talent to a different tier.
However, the final significant change I would like to discuss is Frenzy.
Frenzy is currently a talent where five points are almost never invested.
It is generally used as filler, and the fourth and fifth points provide increasingly poor value.
Most players would normally use Frenzy at 2/5 or 3/5.
The talent currently provides a 20/40/60/80/100% chance for the pet to gain 30% attack speed for 8 seconds after landing a critical strike.
Proposed change:
Convert Frenzy into a 3-point talent.
The effect would activate with a 100% chance whenever the pet lands a critical strike, while the duration would become:
- 3 seconds at rank 1.
- 5 seconds at rank 2.
- 7 seconds at rank 3.
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Late-Game Pet Scaling
Another problem with Beast Mastery is late-game scaling.
Pets have very strong base statistics, but these become increasingly less valuable as the game progresses.
This happens because the primary way for pets to scale is through Spirit Bond.
In later expansions, this type of pet scaling became a baseline mechanic for all Hunters regardless of specialization.
In Classic, Spirit Bond provides 2% maximum health regeneration every five seconds to both the Hunter and the pet.
In Turtle WoW, it additionally provides pet scaling:
- The pet gains 25% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power as Melee Attack Power.
- The pet gains 15% of the Hunter's Ranged Attack Power as Spell Power.
Many items require the player to sacrifice a small amount of Attack Power in exchange for +1% Critical Strike, +1% Hit, +1% Haste or similar statistics.
Those statistics increase the Hunter's damage but do not increase the pet's damage.
Since there is no dedicated pet-scaling equipment set, the most logical solution would be to add additional scaling through another talent, a tier bonus, a Hunter-specific trinket or another similar source.
Possible pet scaling additions:
- The pet gains 25% of the Hunter's Critical Strike chance.
- The pet gains Attack Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
- The pet gains Spell Power equal to 25% of the Hunter's Intelligence.
- The pet copies the Hunter's consumable buffs.
That can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/YlLu0SJY_0U?t=4546
With the proposed scaling above, this would translate into approximately:
- +11% Critical Strike chance for the pet.
- Approximately +62 Attack Power.
- Approximately +62 Spell Power.
However, considering that the pet's critical strike chance against raid bosses is approximately 17%, this would not be particularly game-breaking at such a late stage of progression.
If this additional scaling were combined with the proposed Claw changes, including the possibility of hitting up to three targets, Beast Mastery Hunter could go from having almost no AoE to having reasonably useful AoE.
It would still remain significantly behind the other Hunter specializations in that area, but at least it would move from having almost nothing to having something.
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5. Marksmanship
Marksmanship Hunter is currently in a good position.
However, it still suffers from the problems associated with depending on ranged weapons and missing certain buffs and consumables available to melee-oriented builds.
Another current issue is that the Experimental Ammunition rotation depends on using an Arcane damage ability, a Fire damage ability and a Poison damage ability in order to remain effective.
I do not know whether this ability was intentionally designed around enemies being immune to certain damage types or whether the resulting inconsistency was unintentional.
Proposed change:
Add +1 Physical damage to the relevant abilities.
This would ensure that, when the attack successfully hits, Experimental Ammunition can apply its effect without forcing the player to skip parts of the rotation because the target is immune to a specific school of damage.
Apart from this issue, Marksmanship is still a relatively new specialization.
For now, I would not propose additional changes until we see how the specialization develops in the future.
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6. Survival
Survival is currently a talent tree that does not create much synergy as a secondary specialization with either Beast Mastery or Marksmanship.
Proposed change:
Survivalist, which currently increases maximum health by up to 10%, should also inherit the additional effect currently found in Lightning Reflexes.
The effect would be:
+100% of the Hunter's Agility converted into Melee Attack Power.
Lightning Reflexes would then lose this effect.
This change would not affect the performance of a full Survival Hunter.
However, it would allow more unusual hybrid builds.
For example, a Beast Mastery Hunter using Nightfall as a support build could sacrifice additional trap damage in exchange for a stronger pet.
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7. Proposed Talent Builds
Below are the Beast Mastery talent changes I previously proposed, shown with all talent points invested:
https://www.talent-builder.dev/calculat ... KoACQYBA--
And below are the proposed Survival talent changes, also shown with all talent points invested:
https://www.talent-builder.dev/calculat ... NAKBSAIo--
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Conclusion
These proposals are not intended to be implemented all at once or without testing.
The main purpose of this post is to identify the areas where Hunter mechanics, pet scaling, talent synergy and late-game progression could be improved.
Hopefully, this can help create a discussion focused on realistic changes and the long-term direction of the class.