It took a few tries, but Ghostcrawler has finally agreed to post a "state of the Hunters" on the forums, and there's both good and bad news. First of all, GC flatly lays out that Hunter DPS was too high in Naxx -- Blizzard wants Hunters to be fighting with Locks, Rogues, and Mages for top DPS, not head and shoulders above them. And Survival is still the top DPS build in PvE; while GC says it's probably not a huge increase from the other specs, they are seeing it do better consistently. That said, Hunter DPS may be a little low now, but Blizzard isn't quite sure, for two reasons. First, people are still learning the Ulduar fights, and they don't completely trust the data they've gotten so far. And second, the main goal for fights in there was supposed to be variety, so there are very few places where DPS can just go all out and test how powerful they really are. GC says you should be asking "what's my DPS in this fight," rather than just "what's my DPS?"

As for PvP, he says that the T.N.T. stuns and the big mana drains that Hunters could pull off in the past were just plain overpowered, and they won't be coming back. But as for where Hunters are going next, he says it's more of a function of nerfing other classes rather than buffing Hunters -- it's not that Hunters aren't going into Arena because they suck, it's because other classes are taking their place because they're better. He does say that Hunters are better in 5v5 (which makes sense -- Hunters have always been better from the back rather than forced into the middle of things like they might be in 3v3, and 2v2), and Blizzard is fairly OK with that, as not all classes are going to rock at all Arena levels.

Players, for the most part, are grudgingly agreeing -- T.N.T. stuns were pretty off the hook, and no one argues that Hunters weren't a little too powerful in Naxx. And keep in mind that there are still melee changes in the plans for Hunters: most of the complaints in the thread say that Hunters need more mobility and CC options, and certainly buffing their melee choices a bit would help with that. But we'll have to see what happens here -- I think GC is most insightful when he says that the problem with Hunters isn't necessarily Hunters, it's what other classes have been given lately. He does mention one change they might make (Marksman is mostly having an issue with mana management, so they could definitely buff the mana there a little bit), but it seems like there needs to be a little more smoothing in terms of where other classes are before we can clearly see where the issues lie with Hunters.

Tags: 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, arena, discussion, dps, fights, ghostcrawler, hunter, locks, mages, rogues, tnt-stuns, ulduar

Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances, Arena