[Hunter] Beast o' Melee Hunter (13/0/38)

[Raukodor]

I played a melee spellpower hunter. Was very fun and really powerful. But expensive in consumables and gear if u wanna be good

[Unangwata]

I thought SP doesn't work with hunter in vanilla. I tried it in different expansion for Arcane Shot and Serpent damage tho.

[Roxanneflowers]

I'm getting to where I do absolutely need to get macros made. It was pretty smooth sailing until around 20 (Other than getting my owl and skills to teach) now it's getting a bit choppy and will need some refining to keep progressing.

This is why I provided ready made and proven macros for the task. Took me DAYS to figure out, test, debug, rewrite, retest, debug again ... wash, rinse, repeat ... to come up with the macros you see in this post. Once you get used to using them, you'll start to wonder how you managed to get so far without the "automation" that the macros offer you.

I played a melee spellpower hunter. Was very fun and really powerful. But expensive in consumables and gear if u wanna be good

I thought SP doesn't work with hunter in vanilla. I tried it in different expansion for Arcane Shot and Serpent damage tho.

Spellpower heavy Hunters are a decidedly odd ducky ... mainly because of how few Hunter spells are actually tied to spellpower. There are SOME ... just not all that many.

One of the more obvious possibilities is to stack up healing spellpower and turn your Pet into an absolute BEAST of a Tank that you can heal up relatively easily. This variant typically derives more benefit from Beastmastery than from Survival investments (for what should be obvious reasons).

Aside from various Stings and Arcane Shot, the only other major source of spell damage on a Hunter (that isn't dependent on equipped gear) is going to be your Fire Traps. However, I am unsure if Trap damage is modified by spellpower (haven't tested). Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack (your melee bread 'n' butter attack spells) are all Physical damage typed, so they use Attack Power rather than Spellpower to increase their damage output.

That said, if you've got a build that is loaded with Chance on Hit for spell damage effects, you could theoretically leverage spellpower boosts ... however since most such random procs are effectively Instant cast one has to wonder what kind of spellpower coefficients you'd be looking at. Then you have the flipside of trying to calculate the "cost" of going that route relative to the alternative(s), so as to weigh the relative merits of either option.

So while it CAN be done, the real question then becomes the relative value/advantage of pursuing that path. I'll let others expound on the possibilities to be found there.

[Raukodor]

Traps dont scale with sp at all

Wich scales with sp for a melee hunter are

Dragonbreath chili
Shadow oil
Lifestealing weapons (wraith scythe snd hakkari manslayer)

[Velite]

The main issue is that alot of the survival kit doesn't scale. If mongoose bite and counterattack did weapon damage, meele hunter would be a popular choice to level but for some reasons these abilities all do fixed damage.

[Yutilk]

Traps dont scale with sp at all

Wich scales with sp for a melee hunter are

Dragonbreath chili
Shadow oil
Lifestealing weapons (wraith scythe snd hakkari manslayer)

I just want to point out that there's a difference between an SP Melee Hunter and a Physical Melee Hunter. A Physical Melee Hunter will have very little to no SP. And naturally, a Physical Melee Hunter will cause more DPS.

If you have more questions, let me know. I'm probably the most well informed person about Melee Hunter.

P.S. There's also Zulian Slicer (ZG) which scales with SP and will be your main conduit of damage alongside Shadow Oil.

[Raukodor]

Well now.im playing a phisical.melee Hunter and have some questions

Counterattak. Feel pretty crappy. Does minimal.damage. and for "root" i have improved wingclip

Wyvern sting. Dont seem worth for me.

Lightnight reflexes?. I have read only worth with raid gear

My current build have more talents in bm than survival (31/0/19)
About gear. Should i go for agility first or +dodge?

Weapons. Dual vs 2hander. My build relies in fast autoattacks and spam wingclip for maelstrom procs.(and weapom procs)

Weapons: axe of deep woods and flurry axe. Good combination? (Slow main hand with good proc and fast offhand with eztta attack proc)

Is good go for "chance on hit" weapons? Or better go just for rhe best dps/stats weapons?

[Raukodor]

I usuaally play solo so is a build for survavility

U took improved wingclip? Is useful to.me to kill tough elites

And clever traps seem.a good upgrade

[Djijin]

I leveled something similar back on some previous private server, but I prefer surv/MM.

I don't actually believe in the melee hunter. It's a hybrid build. When Counterstrike goes off (it's a crap melee skill for damage alone) it roots the target for 5 seconds. Why have MM talents? Because 5 seconds allows you to jump back and Aim Shot the rooted target in the face.

Survival is a skirmish tree. It's power comes from melee kiting with ranged mixed in. It will always be higher dps than pure melee and you avoid more damage. You still want all aggro, you just don't pretend you're a melee fighter, which hunter should never actually be outside of a gimmick.

[Moggyfind]

Played this build in tbc classic, and loved it! Best moment was fully tanking the staircase in ZF, felt really really good! Decided to do it again here. Those big crits I get feels absolutely amazing

[Badmaalox]

I leveled something similar back on some previous private server, but I prefer surv/MM.

I don't actually believe in the melee hunter. It's a hybrid build. When Counterstrike goes off (it's a crap melee skill for damage alone) it roots the target for 5 seconds. Why have MM talents? Because 5 seconds allows you to jump back and Aim Shot the rooted target in the face.

Survival is a skirmish tree. It's power comes from melee kiting with ranged mixed in. It will always be higher dps than pure melee and you avoid more damage. You still want all aggro, you just don't pretend you're a melee fighter, which hunter should never actually be outside of a gimmick.

I couldn't have said it better, probably one of the best specs for PvP too when you know how to control the distance with your skill set.

[Mativh]

Good prologue, I'd add that we need a perspective shift.
If the goal is endgame pve, and rushing to max level to be able to do it, then what will be considered meta is the best builds to acomplish that.
Turtle WoW is about something else, for many player something entirely different is the goals, which is playing the actual game, the journey, rather than the destination. So the Turtle Meta should be what is suitable for these kind of goals.

[Imonobor]

How do you deal with Mongoose Bite and Counterattack dealing absolutely miserable amount of damage? Since they don't even add damage to a normal swing, they just have a set amount that doesn't scale with anything. Even if they crit, the damage is pathetic, considering the condition they require (dodging/parrying). Even at max level, Mongoose Bite only deals 115 damage and Counterattack deals 110 damage (according to the tooltip, usually less due to armor). At any level that is really underwhelming.

[Drenari]

Yeah those two deal pathetic damage. Heavy Dynamite does aoe damage of 128 to 172 and its item level 30. Those two abilities do crap damage and you have to be tanking in order to even use them which hunters don't tank in any dungeon or raid.

Traps do decent damage and help compliment melee hunters but they are mana expensive and the requirement to be out of combat makes you jump through hoops to add them into any rotation.

They need more abilities that they can use while not tanking, abilities that scale with buffs and such for end game if they want to be viable.

[Imonobor]

I sincerely hope the class change council rectifies some of these issues to make melee hunter more viable.

These two abilities should have a weapon damage component, so they deal decent damage and scale with gear.
Traps should not cost half your mana and be castable in combat.
Wyvern sting should be pushed higher into the talent tree and be replaced with a more useful capstone talent like Windwalk (from Warcraft 3 blademaster).

[Hyrag]

wolf aspect should get several buffs as

1. be able to put DMG traps in combat with mana cost reduced
2. lacerate comeback as a passive bleed for melee crits in Wolf aspect
3. Melee AP coeficient in MB/Counterattack

+extra for raid viabilization+
Melee oriented expose weakness(as a new SURV talent or Set bonus)

RP focused changes
-ranged attacks can be used in wolf aspect with thrown weapon.
thrown damage scales with Melee AP.

[Azuredrak0]

Glad to see the passion, research and attention spent into this area @Roxanneflowers. I'd love to connect in-game, and maybe start a small hunter community that can compare notes and lobby for improving viability of hunter close-range toolkit. Send me a PM in-game - Roshas

I wanted to also weigh on the discussion.
I'm playing a Survival hunter with focus on close range deep into raiding environment. I'm not 100% in melee, rather flip between melee and ranged wherever optimal. There's a lot of theory and application and I won't get into it here.

A few observations:
1st of all - Melee Hunter is a meme, let's just get that out of the way. It's not optimal.
If anyone plans to raid as a "melee hunter", beware, it doesn't scale very well. Not only is the damage overall lacking compared to other melee classes in a raid environment, but there's also many other issues to tackle. The bottom line is that raiding as a melee hunter is a path for only the most devoted, those that have good friends who don't care about damage meters and those that have skin thick to deal with smart-a$$ puns about their meme.

Raiding as Survival hunter is possible. It's a hunter that can engage equally at all ranges, and also take advantage of Windfury in melee. It's actually pretty fun, albeit provides less Raid utility than Marksman while producing less DPS. So, before you raid, see the above paragraph... If you have lower expectations and understand what to expect in raiding environment, you'll have a lot more fun.

For the development team - I believe the critical first step is to improve the hunter toolkit in very subtle ways without doing anything crazy. I usually propose just 2 things -

1 - Unlock Rapid Fire so it effects both Melee and Ranged attack speed increase
2 - Provide some form of raid utility in Wolf Form via an aura to the group that increases speed of of the effected members (5% speed increase to the group would make it very desirable)

[Dyco]

I sincerely hope the class change council rectifies some of these issues to make melee hunter more viable.

These two abilities should have a weapon damage component, so they deal decent damage and scale with gear.
Traps should not cost half your mana and be castable in combat.
Wyvern sting should be pushed higher into the talent tree and be replaced with a more useful capstone talent like Windwalk (from Warcraft 3 blademaster).

I like your ideas, and tried to merge some of them into a 1.1-TurtleWoW survival hunter talent tree mix.

I would suggest these changes to survival talent tree:

FIRST TALENT ROW:

Improved Slaying (0/3):
Increases all damage against Beast, Giants, Dragonkin and Humanoid targets by an additional 1/2/3%.

Superior Strikes (0/5):
Reduces the cooldown of your Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bitte 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1 sec.

Deflection (0/5):
Increases your parry chance by 1/2/3/4/5%.

SECOND TALENT ROW:

Trap Mastery (0/3):
Increases The duration of freezing and frost trap by 10/20/30% and gives your traps a 8/16/25% chance to entrap the target preventing them to move for 5 sec.
Also decreases the chance enemies will resist trap effects by 5/10/15%.

Savage Strikes (0/2) (linked to Superior Strikes):
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite by 10/20%.

Improved Wing Clip (0/5):
Gives your Wing Clip ability a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to immobilize the target for 5 sec.

THIRD TALENT ROW:

Survivalist (0/5):
Increases total health by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Deterrence (0/1):
When active increases your dodge and parry chance by 25% for 10 sec.

Counterattack (0/1) (linked to Deterrence):
A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent’s attack. This attack deals 40 damage and immobilizes the target for 5 sec. Counterattack annot be blocked, dodged or parried.


FOURTH TALENT ROW:

Wyvern Sting (0/1):
A stinging shot that puts the target to sleep for 12 sec. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the sting causes 300 nature damage over 12 sec. Only usable out of combat. Only one sting per hunter can be active on the target at a time.

Surefooted (0/5):
Increases hit chance by 1/2/3/4/5% and increases the chance movement impairing effects will be resisted by an additional 3/6/9/12/15%.

Improved feign death + Improved Disengange (0/2):
Reduces the chance your feign death ability will be resisted by 2/4%. Also Increases the amount of threat reduced by your disengange ability by 10/20%.

FIFTH TALENT ROW:

Killer Instinct (0/3):
Increases your critical strike chance with all attacks by 1/2/3%.

Bleeding Strikes (0/1) (linked to Killer Instinct):
Your critical melee strikes cause your target to bleed dealing 133 damage over 21 sec.

Melee Specialization (0/5):
Increases the damage you deal with melee weapons by 1/2/3/4/5%.



SIXTH TALENT ROW:

Lacerate (0/1):
A Instant strike that deals X damage increased by 45% of your attack power.

Lighting Reflexes (0/5):
Increases your agility by 3/6/9/12/15%.

SEVENTH TALENT ROW:

Windwalk (0/1) (linked to Lighting Reflexes):
Grants you and your party (lesser) invisibility and 40% increased movement speed for 5 seconds. Any attack while in invisibility will break the effect, but will increase you and your party critical strike chance by 10% for 20 sec.

Dispels movement impairing effects.

Invisibility effect will only apply when out of combat.

3 min cooldown.
------
Mixed some of the 1.1 talents and the actual ones, merged all trap talents into one (maybe add that fire traps can be used in combat).
- Lacerate bleeding effect will now work as warrior's deep wounds -> Bleeding Strikes.
- Lacerate will work as a pseudo warrior's bloodthirst. (I really think melee hunter needs a strike that doesn't depend of dodge/parry chance)
- Surefooted will now grant a max of 5% hit chance as the precision talent in 1.1.
- Merged Feign death actual talent and Disengange 1.1 talent into one.
- Added Melee Specialization talent from 1.1
- Final talent is now windwalk, I think the invisibility component should be applied only out of combat. Instead of guaranteed critical strike for just the hunter I think it could be better to add a critical chance increased buff to the hunter and his party to give this spec a bit support role (MM got Trueshot Aura). If the 20 sec 10% crit buff is too powerful maybe downgrade it to 5% idk.

[Thomamed]

First of all, thanks for posting your build in such great detail. It got me interested in playing hunter and trying this build, which is what I'm currently doing.

There's two thing I have been thinking about:
For one, you wrote that the best weapon speed would be neatly divisible by 6, as that lines up with the Raptor Strike cd. While playing I noticed, that this just means the ability comes off cooldown at the same time that a new attack is made. This doesn't leave any room to press Raptor Strike before the attack and forces you to wait until the next attack. It seems that the best speeds would instead be 1.6/2.1/3.1, which would give you a window of 0.3/0.2/0.1 sec to push Raptor Strike before the next attack.
The talent on Turtle WoW that reduces the cooldown changes these numbers of course.

Second, you wrote that the choice of weapon doesn't matter much. As Raptor Strike is the main damage ability without any extra requirements, critting with it should be the biggest source of damage for melee hunters. Since the ability's damage relies on the weapon damage, a crit from a small dagger will be less damage than a crit from a big 2-h weapon. The dagger's advantage of faster attack speed doesn't translate into more Raptor Strikes, so that should mean that the result is just weaker Raptor Strikes every 6 seconds.

With this in mind, the best weapon should be a 2-h weapon with an attack speed of 3.1, right?
I will add, that I haven't tested any of this in game, so it may all be wrong.