Trueshot feels Amazing, but sadly it hinder' melee build

[Keds]

As title, playing normal ranged hunter is as good as it's ever been on classic, love playing the mini game as your auto attack CDs, the DPS seems OK, and on par with others ranged DPS, but that being said, melee survival build seems even weaker compared what we are cabaple, superior strikes doesn't do anything, traps usable only in combat kinda hinders melee too. My sugestion something like:

Improved Feign Death
Reduces the chance of your FD ability will be resisted by 2/4/6 and reduce it's CD by 6/12/18 seconds. (Total CD now is 12 seconds)

Cleaver Traps and Trap Mastery is now on the same talent;

Improved Wing Clip is now a 0/3 talent, giving 10/15/20% chance to immobilize the target

New Talent called Weapon Specialization
Increase the damage you deal with all weapons by 2/5/6%

New talent called Lacerate: 0/1
5% mana
4 seconds CD
Tears a bleeding wound in the target, dealing 85 Physical + 100 damage over 8 sec. This effect stacks up to 5 times. (or, increase attack speed, stacking too)

Ofc numbers can chance but this way we would have some sort of rotation besides Raptor Strike. Just some suggestions, what you guys think

[Tutayanova]

Survival Hunter already have talent for melee \ range - lightning reflexes.
I think, need play on traps. Just give possibility of using traps in combat.

[Kairion]

Survival Hunter already have talent for melee \ range - lightning reflexes.
I think, need play on traps. Just give possibility of using traps in combat.

Traps are mediocore at best for DPS, but super strong for crowd control in PvP. Having to commit feign death to cast them in combat is what keeps hunter from spaming a instant cast 13 seconds cc in pvp* on a 15 second cd.

*disregarding heartbeat for easier understanding

Rather buff mongoose bite to be useable and deal some actual damage. Considering raptor strike doesn't trigger GCD you could slam both at the same time when melee weaving

[Hctwowfan]

Traps are mediocore at best for DPS, but super strong for crowd control in PvP. Having to commit feign death to cast them in combat is what keeps hunter from spaming a instant cast 13 seconds cc in pvp* on a 15 second cd.

Played a hc melee only goblin hunter to 60, with improved trap damage talent your fire trap does like 900 dmg in your fifties, good enough to kill Ironhide and regular devilsaurs.

Never used mongoose much. With improved talent for AotW and 2x magram daggers you do plenty damage while the pet tanks. Use a fire trap for every mob.

Mongoose needs you to dodge first, so I guess you'd be running in improved AotM and tank the hits yourself. Too much risk, not enough reward for hc. Mongoose dealing flat dmg not scaling with your ap is just bad.

https://armory.turtle-wow.org/#!/character/Qsetmizi

[Kairion]

Traps are mediocore at best for DPS, but super strong for crowd control in PvP. Having to commit feign death to cast them in combat is what keeps hunter from spaming a instant cast 13 seconds cc in pvp* on a 15 second cd.

Played a hc melee only goblin hunter to 60, with improved trap damage talent your fire trap does like 900 dmg in your fifties, good enough to kill Ironhide and regular devilsaurs.

Never used mongoose much. With improved talent for AotW and 2x magram daggers you do plenty damage while the pet tanks. Use a fire trap for every mob.

Mongoose needs you to dodge first, so I guess you'd be running in improved AotM and tank the hits yourself. Too much risk, not enough reward for hc. Mongoose dealing flat dmg not scaling with your ap is just bad.

https://armory.turtle-wow.org/#!/character/Qsetmizi

Thats why i said mongoose needs to be made useful. It is super restrictive AND its damage still sucks. If it would also trigger on the mob dodging you or your pet, for instance, and its damage wouldn't be bad, you could have a reason to go into melee once in a while.

The traps are nice while leveling, but you don't kill mobs that require more than the one pre-placed trap really. While in raids, the place where you would really want to keep immolation trap active with recasting more often than every 30 seconds it doesn't do well. Its a spell, so mobs will resist it a whole lot more, many have decent fire resistence on top of that. and it really does not scale with the gear you want to be wearing.

Double dot spell hunter sounds funny, but won't be winning any dickmeasuring dps contests either :D

[Hctwowfan]

Melee-only hunter imo is a self imposed challenge, like naked warrior or melee warlock or no-wand priest. If you'd bring it on par with ranged hunter, I guess it would see even less play in that regard.

Will it suck in a raid? Absolutely.
But no matter how much you'd alter and buff it, it still would be bad in a raid. If you'd bring it to raid viability, you give the middle finger to rogues.

Devilsaurs take two fire traps, scare beast, fd, second trap, done. Any questing elite is smoother with double fire trap. My initial reply was directed at your perception of fire traps dealing mediocre dmg, which I disagree with. A ~6k hp devilsaur that takes 1.8k dmg from 2x fire trap is most likely close to unkillable without traps for a melee hunter.

Buff em however you want at level 60. Keep em a meme while leveling please.

[Tutayanova]

Agree with buff mongoose bite. Make melee Hunter something like counterattack boy. More dodge = more damage.

[Kairion]

Melee-only hunter imo is a self imposed challenge, like naked warrior or melee warlock or no-wand priest. If you'd bring it on par with ranged hunter, I guess it would see even less play in that regard.

Will it suck in a raid? Absolutely.
But no matter how much you'd alter and buff it, it still would be bad in a raid. If you'd bring it to raid viability, you give the middle finger to rogues.

Devilsaurs take two fire traps, scare beast, fd, second trap, done. Any questing elite is smoother with double fire trap. My initial reply was directed at your perception of fire traps dealing mediocre dmg, which I disagree with. A ~6k hp devilsaur that takes 1.8k dmg from 2x fire trap is most likely close to unkillable without traps for a melee hunter.

Buff em however you want at level 60. Keep em a meme while leveling please.

Fair enough, wile leveling their damage can be quite significant. I just brought it up since i thought it should be an incentive to bring hunters into melee more often in longer fights. and for that i think buffing traps may not be the right call.

[Allwynd01]

I've tried playing a Melee Hunter, it's a complete joke and not worth it at all.

The Melee Hunter needs to learn the Aspect of the Wolf at level 10 at earliest or even start with it from level 1, there is no point in gatekeeping it until level 30. When I wanted to play a Melee Hunter, I was literally gimping myself without a ranged weapon until 30 to "get into the mood" and when I hit 30 and learned Aspect of the Wolf, I realized it doesn't increase my damage at all - I still kill mobs at the same speed and didn't feel any more powerful at all.

The Survival tree needs to have more active Melee Abilities. And existing ones should be changed to be more useful, for example:

- Raptor Strike needs a talent in Survival for reduced cooldown
- Mongoose Bite needs a talent in Survival to not be a response ability, but a regular ability on a short cooldown
- Wing Clip needs a talent that flips it on its head - it only reduces movement speed by 10% (instead of 60%), but it does like 25% or 50% weapon damage instead
- a brand new ability that does DOT and is like a Melee version of Serpent Sting
- something like Rogue's poison coating that allows the hunter to coat his weapons in poison to do DOT damage, it shouldn't require a reagent and be a 30 min buff, but the damage should be really insignificant, like 1-5 damage between levels 1-30 and 5-10 damage between levels 30-60 - nothing game-breaking.


But the reality is Melee Hunter is a completely useless build that's not even fun or enjoyable to struggle with, because the developers haven't really added anything new. They only added Aspect of the Wolf, which is completely useless, it takes too long to get it and besides that it feels like playing a gimped, limited and neutered version of a regular Hunter.

[Hctwowfan]

Fair enough, wile leveling their damage can be quite significant. I just brought it up since i thought it should be an incentive to bring hunters into melee more often in longer fights. and for that i think buffing traps may not be the right call.

Agreed

[Hctwowfan]

I've tried playing a Melee Hunter, it's a complete joke and not worth it at all.

The Melee Hunter needs to learn the Aspect of the Wolf at level 10 at earliest or even start with it from level 1, there is no point in gatekeeping it until level 30. When I wanted to play a Melee Hunter, I was literally gimping myself without a ranged weapon until 30 to "get into the mood" and when I hit 30 and learned Aspect of the Wolf, I realized it doesn't increase my damage at all - I still kill mobs at the same speed and didn't feel any more powerful at all.

AotW straight up doubles your ap at level 30, how did you not notice a difference in kill speed? The bad thing about it is there's only 1 rank of the aspect. But it already gives about as much ap at level 30 as AotH gives at max rank. Paired with improved aspects talent, AotW is very strong at 30 especially and falls off with every further level because it does not scale with your stats.

The worst thing about melee hunters imo is the bad scaling from stats. You're basically a gimped rogue with a pet if you dont use any ranged attacks. But a rogue gets 1ap per strength, 2ap per agility and like 1% crit every 29 agility. A hunter gets 1ap per strength, 1ap melee per agility, 2ap ranged per agility, 1% crit every 53 agility. And on top of that, you use mana for your skills instead of energy.

The Survival tree needs to have more active Melee Abilities. And existing ones should be changed to be more useful, for example:

- Raptor Strike needs a talent in Survival for reduced cooldown
- Mongoose Bite needs a talent in Survival to not be a response ability, but a regular ability on a short cooldown
- Wing Clip needs a talent that flips it on its head - it only reduces movement speed by 10% (instead of 60%), but it does like 25% or 50% weapon damage instead
- a brand new ability that does DOT and is like a Melee version of Serpent Sting [...]

Raptor strike already has a reduced cd talent, albeit it takes 5 tp for a 1 second decrease. Mongoose would still suck even with your changes because it does not scale with anything at all but is just flat damage that gets mitigated by enemy armor. I'd prefer they bring back Lacerate and remove the Wyvern Sting in that regard, another dot added to fire trap would smooth things out a bit.

But the reality is Melee Hunter is a completely useless build that's not even fun or enjoyable to struggle with, because the developers haven't really added anything new. They only added Aspect of the Wolf, which is completely useless, it takes too long to get it and besides that it feels like playing a gimped, limited and neutered version of a regular Hunter.

What's fun is subjective. I had fun with it. AotW see above, wholeheartedly disagree with your perception.

Nothing stops a regular hunter from using their ranged toolkit and use any buffed up melee stuff aswell. You cant bring a melee only hunter anywhere near the power of a regular hunter without buffing regular hunter at the same time.

It's a meme spec and the fun part is to make it work despite all its flaws. If you buff it to be a viable option, you take away more from it than you add.