#0 - Aug. 30, 2006, 11:04 a.m.
Hello Hunter Community.
I saw two screenshots lately, that really affected me. First there was a thaddius kill
screen, where you can see a really strong raid, with 40 alliance members. But there was
no hunter, not even one. And next i saw the screen from Nihilum. First Horde Guild in the
World to kill the 4 horsemen. And what can we see on that screenshot ? Theres only 1
Hunter in the raid. That is more and more proof of the fact that hunters are becoming
useless in raids. Even in my guild ( we have 10 bosse down in naxx ) we are using almost
no hunters anymore. And some time ago we were raiding with lots, like 5-7 hunters in a raid,
because we have a couple of very good hunter players with all t2 equip and such, but
atm we only raid with 2 hunters, 3 if we need tranqulize shot.
So What is the problem with Hunters in raids ?
We are pure damage dealers. We have nearly no way to support the raid in any other way. ok, in
some situations its nice to have a hunter for the pulling job, or as assist leader. But
even for that, one hunter in the raid would to fine, no need to take more then that. And
if you dont have one, who cares, any class can pull or make the assist leader, i mean
warlocks have pets, too. And Feign Death is almost never any advantage. Most pulls will
draw your entire raid into combat, so that your feign death after a bad pull will save noone.
With that said, we have one way of supporting the raid. The True Shot Aura. But since i am
raidleader for our naxx raids, i noticed that its rarely possible to use the aura, even
if you have hunter that specced it. Imagine a group 1 Shaman 1 Warrior 2 Rogues. Well
that group would greatly benefit from the Trueshot aura, but then again the trueshot aura
will give you 3 times 100 attack power (the shaman wont fight melee). Instead of using that
300 attack power i could take a 2nd warrior or a 3rd rogue into that group, because the
windfury buff on 1 player will be more effective then my aura on 3 players. So it is
very rare that my aura will really be needed in a raid, and depends on the raidsetup.
What about our damage ?
I remember the times, back in Molten core, with blue gear, the first epics were dropping,
my damage was great. Back in those days the first chance to measure your "E-Peen"
was damage meters. We all had it =). And i remember, i was always top5. Sometimes i even
was rank#1, depending on the boss. There were some rogues and maybe from time to time a
good mage that could conquer my damage, but that was it. Nowadays i'm a top end equipped
hunter. I got 4/9 Cryptstalker, the ring of the godslayer, band of reanimation and stuff
like that. Adding to that, that i have the spec which will dish out the most damage possible
in my opinion (20-31-0). But what happens when i take a look into my SWstats ( new damage meter)
now ? I find myself somewhere between #15 and #20. Everyone in front of my. All mages, all rogues,
all of the warriors. Even some warlocks and shamans are in front of me. And almost none of them
have that good gear.
So what changed ?
The main source of the problem are our abilities. Lets take a look what we got.
- Serpent Sting. ~ 500 damage over 15 seconds. Well, with blue gear after you just hit
lvl 60, this skill is nice. But with full epic gear, where even my auto shot
deals something in the neighbourhood of 400, serpent sting is rarely worth
using. The fact the most warlocks go crazy when we overwrite one of their dots
with our serpent sting even made our raid forbid using it at all.
