Melee Hunter, and how to make it viable.

[Arkael]

Hello everyone! My name is Arkael and today I will be talking about melee hunter in Turtle Wow and my ideas for some changes going forward. Currently, the playstyle is very underwhelming due to some design flaws but could easily be remedied with some changes.

Before I get into that though, I want to tell you guys a little bit about myself. I have been playing World of Warcraft since the beta test. During that time, I've played many different classes and engaged in all forms of content. I have also played on the Turtle Wow server on and off for the past year and a half. I actually just finished a hardcore run on my hunter Arkael and achieved Immortal. Most recently though, I have played melee hunter on SoD on the NA server Crusader Strike as my night elf Arkaèl. It was here I was able to enjoy my dream playstyle of melee hunter. While I don't agree with the way they implemented it, the fact you can play melee hunter and compete (actually top DPS currently) is awesome.

That's enough about me, now I want to talk about some of the short comings of melee hunter on Turtle wow. While I very much appreciate the nods they have given the spec, it still has a long way to go. First off, I want to address the elephant in the room, Aspect of the Wolf. I really want to like this ability, honestly, but 155 attack power just isn't enough to warrant losing the ability to use ranged attacks. Granted, if you want to play melee you will be using this Aspect regardless, but it just feels bad. My suggested change would be to allow ranged attacks to be used in the form, because restricting them makes no sense. Just from a practicality standpoint, my hunter wouldn’t forget how to use his bow would he? Also, classes that have ranged weapons can still use them in combat. It just flat out doesn't make sense. Not to mention, it just feels bad. The goal should be to make the game feel fun to play, not arbitrarily restricting.

Next up, I want to talk about Raptor Strike. I think the one and only good thing that the Blizzard developers did with melee hunter was giving them the Melee Specialist rune. For those who don't know, this rune reduces the cooldown of Raptor Strike to three seconds and makes it instant instead of the next melee attack. While the cooldown aspect could be argued, making this an instant attack is the way to go. Much like my issue with Aspect of the Wolf, vanilla Raptor Strike just feels bad to use. Also, the way I would implement this change is when you are using Aspect of the Wolf, Raptor Strike becomes instant. That way we are keeping melee hunters in Wolf.

Moving on, I want to get into the nitty gritty of the playstyle, namely the survival talent tree. For me, survival was always meant to be the melee/trap hunter. As such, Turtle Wow's survival tree should reflect that and while Superior Strikes, and creation of Improved Slaying are welcomed additions I think more changes can be made. To start, in the third-row survivalist doesn't make much sense, a flat increase to stamina is confusing in a DPS talent tree. I would replace it with Expose Weakness from the TBC talent tree, except make it on melee crits What this would read like would be the following: Your "melee" critical have a 33% chance to apply an Expose Weakness effect to the target. Expose Weakness increases the attack power of all attackers against that target by 25% of your Agility for 7 sec, three points. This would give melee hunters some raid utility that is sorely needed.

As we move down the tree the next head scratcher is Counterattack. Much like survivalist, this ability doesn't make much sense. What I would suggest is removing this and replacing it with Lacerate, but not the wimpy vanilla version that did 6 damage a tick. Give it around the same damage as serpent sting, make it last 15 seconds, and perhaps give it ap scaling depending on balance. The reason for this talent will be addressed in our next edit.

Looking at Killer Instinct, it's kind of boring as it's just flat crit. What I would suggest is this, "the damage caused by your Lacerate and Immolation Trap spells have a chance to allow the use of Mongoose Bite for 4 seconds”. This will give the spec a core gameplay loop of dots and procs which would give it some variety compared to the other melee specs. With this change I would also suggest increasing the damage on Mongoose Bite and/or allowing it to scale with AP as 115 damage at level 60 is pitiful.

While we are talking about hunter changes, I want to bring up one that is very important to me. Nothing feels worse in vanilla wow than not being able to use the pet you want. I would suggest normalizing pet attack speed, to make them all 1.0 that way all pets are closer in DPS and giving each of them a mobility move. For example, I would give Raptors the dash ability that Cats have. If you guys take away anything from this post, please change the way pets’ function on Turtle Wow. Lack of choice sucks!

Finally, at the top of the tree we have Wyvern Sting. I hate this ability and will never understand why it was added. It's another ability that feels bad to use. I would suggest removing entirely and making the top talent allow the hunter to use traps in combat. This would allow for the gameplay loop to be maintaining Lacerate and Immolation trap, use Raptor Strike on cool down, and use Mongoose Bite on proc.

While these are quite a few changes, I think that is what's required to get melee hunter in a good spot. Obviously, number tuning can change everything so while some of these ideas may sound strong on paper, numbers can make them reasonable in game. Thank you for reading this post, and please comment below with your thoughts! I enjoyed writing this out and hope the Turtle Wow developers will considering making some of these changes moving forward.

[Likaleo]

Why you want to melee hunter? Play warrior/rogue/pala if you want to melee.
Or equip nightfall and full tier2 -> spam that winqclip

[Geojak]

Early vanilla survival tree was full the meele tree. Unfrotuently blizzard changed that in the earlier patches. Wold need to fully commit the tree to meele to get this viable

[Glaive]

I recently leveled a hunter to 60 and did mess around with melee for a time. I came to the exact same conclusion you did about aspect of the wolf, and I posted about it on the forums. I would be surprised if they don't change this with the class changes.

[Arkael]

Why you want to melee hunter? Play warrior/rogue/pala if you want to melee.
Or equip nightfall and full tier2 -> spam that winqclip

It's about class fantasy for me. I've always wanted to play hunter similar to Rexxar. I also believe that early on in wows development that's what the survival tree was meant to be. Just look at the original talent tree.

[Czasku]

Go full Beast Mastery tree. Rest of the points spent on Survival tree. Take 2x 1h weapon. Congrats, you're the melee hunter now.

Here, i made a build for you. https://talents.turtle-wow.org/hunter/50K1WW8P-0-X0CE6I

[Arkael]

Go full Beast Mastery tree. Rest of the points spent on Survival tree. Take 2x 1h weapon. Congrats, you're the melee hunter now.

Here, i made a build for you. https://talents.turtle-wow.org/hunter/50K1WW8P-0-X0CE6I

Funny enough, I came up with a very similar spec myself and I am already attempting melee. The only issue is this spec isn't very good and requires more support for the developers to make the playstyle viable. Hence, why I created this post :).

[Ishilu]

Quick answer: Oh no, not another melee hunter thread, just buff Wyvern Sting and give us Expose Weakness.

Long Answer:
I agree with some parts of this suggestion, especially the pet normalization, but I personally like using traps and W.S. (clunky but useful, they've improved both in TBC), so of course I don't want to see my spec being replaced by a melee dps.

I've dug out the old talent trees with lacerate here:
https://classicwowtalents.appspot.com/i ... =1124125_3

In an earlier discussion about the same topic (which I don't find anymore), my proposal was to modify the original survival tree roughly like this:

1. Condense trap talents, obviously.
2. Add Expose Weakness just like in TBC. No need for the "melee only" restriction.
3. Put Wyvern Sting and Lacerate as capstone talents into this tree, but...
4. Add some more dependencies, e.g. Lacerate requiring 5/5 in melee specialization and Wyvern Sting requiring some points in trapping talents, so you would have to invest significantly more than 31 points to get both. I'd basically split the tree into a trap/cc tree and a melee tree.

On a sidenote, I think raptor strike is fine, it works just like heroic strike for warriors, but I think mongoose bite is horrible.

[Arkael]

Quick answer: Oh no, not another melee hunter thread

This made me chuckle, but I think it goes to show the amount of people in the player base who want to play melee hunter. My only concern with making Expose Weakness usable by range is it lessens the value of having a melee hunter. If the DPS is low for the playstyle, people will just bring a ranged hunter to apply the buff and call it a day. This way, melee has a reason to actually be brought. That said, I agree with pretty much everything else you mentioned other than raptor strike, and I don't want to kill off the playstyle you enjoy. I think the button is currently boring to push and making it instant would help with that and dps.

[Goblinlover]

Melee hunter for the win!! Being a badass troll with two fast axes and a pet is the best thing ever! I really hope they expand on this idea

[Ishilu]

My only concern with making Expose Weakness usable by range is it lessens the value of having a melee hunter.

Good point, I didn't think of this. We don't need to copy-paste Expose Weakness from TBC. Imagine the talent proccing 2 similar but different effects (e.g. either increase AP for attackers by X% hunter agi OR reduce armor by Y% hunter agi), depending on whether it's caused by a melee strike or a ranged attack while giving the hunter a debuff (for the same duration) that prevents them from activating both effects at the same time. That would be my put-2-trees-into-one-idea taken one step further.

I don't really mind any changes to raptor strike, but can we agree that mongoose bite is atterly useless at the moment? That one definitely needs a rework which would also spice up melee hunter gameplay.

[Arkael]

I think it's just about giving them SOMETHING ranged hunter doesn't. Doesn't really matter what the case is. I think a lot of people are opposed to melee hunter because they see the situation with SoD and see melee hunter blowing ranged hunter out of the water in terms of DPS. This keeps them cautious about supporting melee. The way this is remedied is by giving them utility while keeping their DPS below ranged.

As far as mongoose bite, I could agree more. Perhaps either increase it's damage flat out, or make it deal weapon damage with scaling AP? Heck, just making it deal flat weapon damage at this point would be amazing.

[Ishilu]

I think it's just about giving them SOMETHING ranged hunter doesn't.

Sure thing, that's the direction they took in TBC. Giving BM hunters Ferocious Inspiration and Survival Hunters Expose Weakness assured that all specs brought some form of utility, and not only MM.
So my suggestion would include giving "Expose Weakness A" to 'melee hunters' and "Expose Weakness B" to 'traps and CC trickster hunters' without making them overlap.

[Nurincarinun]

I think a way of advancing the devs' current attempts to give hunter a melee focused playstyle should continue on the path of Aspect of the Wolf by adding mechanics that require you to be in melee and prevent you from carrying benefits over to ranged or vice versa.

I think the survival tree is perfectly functional as of now as a support tree for the marksman tree: get me out of melee; if I get into melee, give me one +20% crit Raptor Strike until my Improved Wingclip procs or, if its a desperate enemy with low health trying to close up out of your ranged abilities, to finish-off with a 2h Raptor Strike crit; give me advanced CC / kiting by enhancing trap mechanics for PvE or by an other spec-route for PvP; give me enhanced survivability in melee until I manage to get into ranged while not loosing too much damage output (deep MM vs deep surv). I think this should remain intact.

There is Wyvern Sting though, that can be replaced without harming the previously described. What could we exchange it for? I think right now, going full BM is the best fundament if you want to stay in melee as a hunter. If we do this with Improved Aspect of the Wolf, we mainly get a haste oriented auto attacker as of now.

Some suggest to make traps placeable in combat. I reject that. But how about putting a talent into survival tree at 31 that gives some or all of your melee hits a chance of proccing a prolonging of an applied trap effect on the victim ("Ensnaring Strikes"?). Gives you a way of playing more trap oriented, doesnt change the MM-tree meta I guess, stays haste oriented, gives you an occupation between Raptor Strike cds and without need for Mongoose Bite (if you never get aggro like a good damage dealer) but with an extra proc carrier if coming up (like during an off-tank / tank-supportive "carry mobs back to tank" playstyle).

I also fear the impact on gear distribution. I gladly never fell too far into the "all weapons are hunter weapons" fallacy, not after beginning to gear up in endgame dungeons in orig vanilla at least. I would be annoyed to see this get any validity. So maybe melee hunters should be a niche for some not very sought after melee weapons? Quick main hand weapons without tank stats for example?

I can also see giving hunters a new trap ("Ensnaring Trap"?) in deep surv tree that raises the weapon skill against the trapped enemy for all attackers by some amount; that would make them more independent from other classes' weapon skill / hit gear, and could be a part of solving racial weapon skill meta dilemmas.

I personally would appreciate some pet-hunter-synergy mechanics, as I'd also do for haste oriented MM hunter built:
viewtopic.php?t=11616

[Natuaduck]

The one thing that holds melee back so hard is the lack of ability to properly weave like you can in Wrath where the min range was lowered to 5 instead of 8.

[Arkael]

I think a way of advancing the devs' current attempts to give hunter a melee focused playstyle should continue on the path of Aspect of the Wolf by adding mechanics that require you to be in melee and prevent you from carrying benefits over to ranged or vice versa.

I'm not opposed to keeping Aspect of the Wolf as it is now, but it definitely feels clunky to use it. On top of that, no other class has such a restriction place on them.

There is Wyvern Sting though, that can be replaced without harming the previously described. What could we exchange it for? I think right now, going full BM is the best fundament if you want to stay in melee as a hunter. If we do this with Improved Aspect of the Wolf, we mainly get a haste oriented auto attacker as of now.

Originally I wanted to replace it with a talent that allowed for traps in combat as a keystone. I'm also not opposed to BM being the melee tree, my original idea though was for the melee spec to focus on melee and traps as a play style.

Some suggest to make traps placeable in combat. I reject that. But how about putting a talent into survival tree at 31 that gives some or all of your melee hits a chance of proccing a prolonging of an applied trap effect on the victim ("Ensnaring Strikes"?). Gives you a way of playing more trap oriented, doesnt change the MM-tree meta I guess, stays haste oriented, gives you an occupation between Raptor Strike cds and without need for Mongoose Bite (if you never get aggro like a good damage dealer) but with an extra proc carrier if coming up (like during an off-tank / tank-supportive "carry mobs back to tank" playstyle).

This is an interesting idea, however I enjoy pressing buttons and passively getting a dot from Immolation Trap for example is just kind of boring. I wanna press my buttons, xD.

I also fear the impact on gear distribution. I gladly never fell too far into the "all weapons are hunter weapons" fallacy, not after beginning to gear up in endgame dungeons in orig vanilla at least. I would be annoyed to see this get any validity. So maybe melee hunters should be a niche for some not very sought after melee weapons? Quick main hand weapons without tank stats for example?

Tbh I feel like this is a non issue. You are already replacing a warrior or a rogue for a melee hunter, which would already be rolling on those items.

[Azuredrak0]

I can also see giving hunters a new trap ("Ensnaring Trap"?) in deep surv tree that raises the weapon skill against the trapped enemy for all attackers by some amount; that would make them more independent from other classes' weapon skill / hit gear, and could be a part of solving racial weapon skill meta dilemmas.

This is a unique and very interesting idea that builds and expands on the Surivival trap mechanics. I'm a big fan of this idea, Nurincarinun. Ensnaring Trap might also be adopted to some form of raid-wide utility debuff that would make deep melee survival actually desirable in raids.

How about another one - allow use of Throwing weapons while in Wolf Form. This denies us a stat stick, but allows continued DPS during fight mechanics where melee must run out or move. There are a small number of abilities that throwing weapons can use outside of just auto-shot, like R1 or Multishot (oddly), Viper Sting, Wyvern sting... I think there's one more. Currently throwing weapons are never used as far as I know.

A few simple ideas that could be easily implemented that I had is
1 - Wolf Form group speed increase, maybe transferring some portion of Imp Predator Aspects proc to the group.
2 - Rapid Shots unlocked from ranged to effect melee also while in Wolf Form (via deep survival talent possibly)
3 - Deep Survival mod to Lightning Reflexes to proc free (or reduced cost) placement of a trap in combat when enemy takes a crit.

[Zvyrhol]

Good points, interesting read even though I don't know much about Hunter, my only character of this class stays at level 40. Nevertheless, your suggestions seem to be reasonable to me. When you described not having possibility of using ranged attacks in Aspect of the Wolf, I thought about Shadow Priest's Shadowform. In Shadowform Priest can't use Holy spells which makes sense lore-wise and is example where limitations aren't necessarily bad - you get powerful buffs at the cost of survivability. However for Hunter, as you pointed out there is no explanation for limiting ranged attacks in this aspect. In fact, this aspect currently doesn't scale its benefits (constant Attack Power) but its cost scales - the better gear you have, the more ranged attack you lose.

Generally cool ideas, they seem to be easily implemented. Not like other topics where people suggest changes out of the Moon and not in Vanilla style for example super-duper AOE damage spells that deal 2000 damage to everybody, talent that gives 10 unique things and other such dumb suggestions.

[Calli]

I don't know much about Hunter

I appreciate you admit this. Not like the creator of this topic.

[Nazzydragon]

Oh NO another melee hunter thread? I think you mean OH YES!

There's a lot of Rexxar fans out there, deal with it. We're loud at times.

[Bigsmerf]

I don't know much about Hunter

I appreciate you admit this. Not like the creator of this topic.

Well, you're welcome to challenge these suggestions at any time if you think so.

[Larrycowson]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec, it's a utility spec to, well, help you survive. Anything even adjacently related to melee is to be used so you can create distance and start using ranged attacks again or fill the time you spend in your deadzone with at least a pittance of damage so you arent just stuck unable to do *ANYTHING*. It's just a stopgap, so trying to force a melee hunter, or rather a hunter that only excels in melee range, at all is kind of antithetical to the class.

So if you really want to force survival to increase melee damage and give you a viable way to play it, you should lean into the stamina talent, and counterattack, and all of the things that keeps you alive long enough to be actually able to do it. Focus less on making raptor strike instant, and more on making it bursty. Focus less on removing defensives and more on making them better.

Leaning into making Mongoose Bite a hunter equivalent to Revenge is actually a really good idea, I think allowing survival hunters to use traps in combat or all hunters to do that is also a great way to embrace survival as would adding something to encourage using ranged attacks to start fights and to end them like maybe opening/opener range attacks do something to increase damage dealt by melee abilities and melee abilities causing the target to take more damage from your ranged attacks in some form.

[Ravenstone]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec...

It was a melee spec, back in 1.2. There were several talents straight up meant to increase your melee damage. One was called "Melee Specialization" and increased your melee damage by 5%. Another increased critical strike chance and one increased your chance to hit, both again only affecting your melee weapons, so to say it was never a melee spec is incorrect.

[Arkael]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec...

It was a melee spec, back in 1.2. There were several talents straight up meant to increase your melee damage. One was called "Melee Specialization" and increased your melee damage by 5%. Another increased critical strike chance and one increased your chance to hit, both again only affecting your melee weapons, so to say it was never a melee spec is incorrect.

Also, for clarity this was case till ZG launched (nearly a year later). I imagine the reasoning for the removal of lacerate and the melee talents was they couldn't figure out a way to balance the playstyle. I will add this to my original idea, survival doesn't HAVE to be the melee DPS tree. It's merely an idea. The BM tree is ALSO a viable option and is currently the tree melee hunters are using. My idea behind survival stems from getting melee hunters to use traps within their core rotation (something ranged does very little of). Currently, the challenges behind my idea is how it would effect hunters that are spec'ing into survival for PvP reasons and grabbing scatter shot in marksmanship.

How could this be solved? It's tricky, perhaps placing Aspect of the Wolf high into the survival tree (perhaps as the top talent) and make it the key piece behind what makes melee hunter viable. This would include things that augment raptor strike, lacerate, etc. I get people enjoy their currently playstyle of Survival, but you guys got to realize there is a entire play base inside your class that doesn't even have a represented talent tree (melee hunters). Marksman is already the go to PvE spec and is very viable in PvP. Melee Hunter doesn't have anything. Is making survival the tree the answer? Maybe, but BM could also work as well with some retooling. BM isn't very useful outside of leveling and in niche PvP situations.

[Larrycowson]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec...

It was a melee spec, back in 1.2. There were several talents straight up meant to increase your melee damage. One was called "Melee Specialization" and increased your melee damage by 5%. Another increased critical strike chance and one increased your chance to hit, both again only affecting your melee weapons, so to say it was never a melee spec is incorrect.

As I said, it was never a melee spec, it was a spec that increased melee damage so as to fill dead air between getting distance to prevent *death*.

You know, Surviving. This isnt a rogue or a warrior, its the "you're tankier and have more CC spec" any bonus damage that comes from melee is a consequence of trying to leave melee range to survive, not run into it or idealize being in your deadzone.

[Arkael]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec...

It was a melee spec, back in 1.2. There were several talents straight up meant to increase your melee damage. One was called "Melee Specialization" and increased your melee damage by 5%. Another increased critical strike chance and one increased your chance to hit, both again only affecting your melee weapons, so to say it was never a melee spec is incorrect.

As I said, it was never a melee spec, it was a spec that increased melee damage so as to fill dead air between getting distance to prevent *death*.

You know, Surviving. This isnt a rogue or a warrior, its the "you're tankier and have more CC spec" any bonus damage that comes from melee is a consequence of trying to leave melee range to survive, not run into it or idealize being in your deadzone.

I don't thinking anyone 100% knows what the devs plans for survival really were. Honestly, the more I look at the tree it makes you wonder if they weren't intending for them to tank in some capacity. That said, there are way to many talents in the tree for it to have not been meant to be melee in some form. Regardless if you think melee support should be in the survival tree or not, there are WAY too many people interested in playing melee hunter for there to not be some kind of talent support for the role. Beast Mastery, Survival, it doesn't matter, just give us something.

[Ravenstone]

The problem here is the assumption Survival was ever a melee spec.

Survival has never been a melee spec...

It was a melee spec, back in 1.2. There were several talents straight up meant to increase your melee damage. One was called "Melee Specialization" and increased your melee damage by 5%. Another increased critical strike chance and one increased your chance to hit, both again only affecting your melee weapons, so to say it was never a melee spec is incorrect.

As I said, it was never a melee spec, it was a spec that increased melee damage so as to fill dead air between getting distance to prevent *death*.

You know, Surviving. This isnt a rogue or a warrior, its the "you're tankier and have more CC spec" any bonus damage that comes from melee is a consequence of trying to leave melee range to survive, not run into it or idealize being in your deadzone.

I think it's we're just arguing semantics at this point. For me, Survival is a melee spec, but that doesn't mean they should always be in melee. I'm of the opinion that just because you spec 'Survival Melee', you shouldn't be disgregarding the rest of your toolkit. Just like a 'Fire' mage would still use frost spells. It is why I always liked melee weaving as a build. It's still predominantly a ranged build, but it uses the melee parts of Survival to increase its damage output.

I think they should first lean into improving melee weaving via Survival, giving a melee Expose Weakness ability, and then look at a more melee oriented Hunter via BM+Surv, emphasising a Rexxar type fantasy. One that would still use Stings and Shots from range before closing the gap, but also able to retreat if it becomes unfavourable.

[Nurincarinun]

The main problem I see is: we have to seperate (the power) of melee and ranged somehow.

Even more people than those who want a powerful melee built want to play hunter as (the only) ranged physical dps class. It is a very iconic setup for the spirit of vanilla. Changes made to hunter in TBC made me actually cease the game (as a hunter player).

If they get additional power in melee, that will close their main weak point in PvP; only thing worse on this strain would be to remove the dead zone. We don't want a warrior to be powerful in ranged as an addition - vice versa for hunter.

So the only way I see is a seperation. Either by advancing in the direction of melee restriction as with aspect of the wolf, which I think is the easier and less risky; or by distributing power in the talent trees so it becomes impossible to go too extreme in melee and ranged while allowing to do a reasonable mix of both by going medicore into each, which I think is a bigger project and could easily alienate players that value the promise of the server to stick to the spirit of vanilla.

[Gantulga]

Survival is not a "melee tree", it's a support three for the other two. Hunter is a ranged class by design.

[Arkael]

Survival is not a "melee tree", it's a support three for the other two. Hunter is a ranged class by design.

If it's only ever meant to be a dip tree to get a few desired talents, I feel like that's bad design. It should have a dedicated identity, and that goes for all trees. I think Survivals biggest issue is it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a melee spec? Is it the trapping/utility spec? It could also be argued that BM struggles with this same issue. Outside of leveling, only melee hunters are spec'ing into BM. If a majority of ranged hunters would like survival to stay the same, how would they feel about BM becoming the melee tree?

[Gantulga]

Survival is not a "melee tree", it's a support three for the other two. Hunter is a ranged class by design.

If it's only ever meant to be a dip tree to get a few desired talents, I feel like that's bad design. It should have a dedicated identity, and that goes for all trees. I think Survivals biggest issue is it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a melee spec? Is it the trapping/utility spec? It could also be argued that BM struggles with this same issue. Outside of leveling, only melee hunters are spec'ing into BM. If a majority of ranged hunters would like survival to stay the same, how would they feel about BM becoming the melee tree?

That's how some talent trees are designed in vanilla, they're there to support the other trees. Arcane, enhancement, assassination, demonology, survival, etc.
TWoW did buff some of those but essentially they still serve the same purpose. Something like a melee hunter would require a big rework of the class to even accommodate such gameplay and I don't see TWoW interested in such on ordeal.

[Akos1896]

I think that smaller changes can help them. Not making them meta but making melee hunters less miserable.
1. Buff raptor strike
2. Shorten its CD via talent and make raptor strike buff pet's damage
3. Change wyvern sting into something which either gives DPS or enables in-combat trap usage.
4. Give them a melee hunter-only utility. Anything. One debuff at the deep end of the tree will do.

This wouldn't solve the spec's problem but would help them a lot.

It's personal but I can imagine melee hunters two ways:
1. In-combat trap layers. Support build, possible with a new, custom trap.
2. Melee spec where hunter's melee strikes buff pet damage and pet damage (maybe crits) buff hunter's damage. Kind of a symbiosis.

[Arkael]

I think that smaller changes can help them. Not making them meta but making melee hunters less miserable.
1. Buff raptor strike
2. Shorten its CD via talent and make raptor strike buff pet's damage
3. Change wyvern sting into something which either gives DPS or enables in-combat trap usage.
4. Give them a melee hunter-only utility. Anything. One debuff at the deep end of the tree will do.

This wouldn't solve the spec's problem but would help them a lot.

It's personal but I can imagine melee hunters two ways:
1. In-combat trap layers. Support build, possible with a new, custom trap.
2. Melee spec where hunter's melee strikes buff pet damage and pet damage (maybe crits) buff hunter's damage. Kind of a symbiosis.

I think any combination of these would be amazing for melee hunter. I think any nod towards melee hunter would be much appreciated.