Please Don't Leave Melee Hunter Out Of CC2

[Arkael]

Title pretty much says it all. From the way the recent announcement reads this may be the case. There are plenty of people in your community that enjoy the playstyle that have been asking for it to be fleshed out. It's also possible to implement minor changes to the playstyle without breaking the rest of the class. Give us something in alternative tier or anything that increases our viability. I've also created a forum post recently that outlined some changes that could be nice.

I respect the fact that some of you on the Turtle Team believe hunters being in melee doesn't follow their class identity but please hear me out. The original survival talent tree had a big lean towards a melee playstyle with many talents that increased the power of hunters while in melee. So it was definitely at least a thought for hunters to be viable inside melee for the original wow devs. Even this clip from Kevin Jordan shows what they were original thinking with the tree.

They wanted survival to play similar to Aragorn from LOTR kind of the opposite to how ranged hunter plays. Strong in melee, but has SOME ranged capability. Lets not forget about Rexxar who is THE melee hunter in Wow lore.

I love turtle wow. It's the best classic experience bar none, and regardless of what you guys plan to do with hunter I will continue to play and enjoy the game. That said, myself and others in the hunter community would enjoy the game more if the playstyle got a nod in the CC2.

[Borefficz]

Originally hunter was supposed to be using bucklers... Not every early idea Blizzard came up with was a good one. I hope the devs focus on the ranged aspects of hunters and only do anything with melee once they have that figured out.

[Ishilu]

without breaking the rest of the class

That's a very important part. While I personally don't care one way or another about melee hunters, it's sometimes annyoing when people want to replace the survival tree entirely with some melee build. I'd personally like to see the tree developed roughly in the direction that tbc took (basically, keep wyvern sting in, and add some expose weakness-like support) and it has beeen discussed that this might be possible while also giving melee hunters some love and their own niche at the same time.

EDIT: considering Rexxar is a beastmaster, wouldn't it be more logical to update the BM tree for melee?

[Arkael]

without breaking the rest of the class

That's a very important part. While I personally don't care one way or another about melee hunters, it's sometimes annyoing when people want to replace the survival tree entirely with some melee build. I'd personally like to see the tree developed roughly in the direction that tbc took (basically, keep wyvern sting in, and add some expose weakness-like support) and it has beeen discussed that this might be possible while also giving melee hunters some love and their own niche at the same time.

EDIT: considering Rexxar is a beastmaster, wouldn't it be more logical to update the BM tree for melee?

I personally don't care where the support for melee hunter comes from, I just want it SOMEWHERE. The point of the video I linked was to show what the original design plan was and that giving melee hunter some love does fall within identity for vanilla classes.

[Hyrag]

without breaking the rest of the class

That's a very important part. While I personally don't care one way or another about melee hunters, it's sometimes annyoing when people want to replace the survival tree entirely with some melee build. I'd personally like to see the tree developed roughly in the direction that tbc took (basically, keep wyvern sting in, and add some expose weakness-like support) and it has beeen discussed that this might be possible while also giving melee hunters some love and their own niche at the same time.

EDIT: considering Rexxar is a beastmaster, wouldn't it be more logical to update the BM tree for melee?

I personally don't care where the support for melee hunter comes from, I just want it SOMEWHERE. The point of the video I linked was to show what the original design plan was and that giving melee hunter some love does fall within identity for vanilla classes.

i think more melee crit related mechanics with wolf aspect.

[Bigsmerf]

Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing melee hunter get worked on too. It's a playstyle I think would be fun to experiment with, and (despite this bit not being relevant to turtle at all) is something I enjoy playing on occasion in retail. I don't like retail much from a gameplay perspective but when I visit it's one of my few go to's, because blizzard kinda nailed the "melee hunter" type of fantasy for me. Fighting with your pet in coordinated combat. Pulling out a ranged weapon on occasion and injecting a venom, tossing harpoons at your enemy to close the gap... Throwing bombs... Okay, maybe that one's a bit off.

I think something less extreme would definitely be preferred here on turtle. Of course it would. It's VANILLA. But, I feel like a soft/partial type of official survival hunter would be fun. Here's some abilities I would make, hopefully nothing extremely broken.

Serpent Strike - Essentially serpent sting but in melee. Can only have serpent strike or sting exclusively applied to an enemy at once.

Crawler Snap - Roots the enemy in place for 8 seconds, dealing small damage over the duration. Also roots the hunter. Would be a nice CC for dungeons when a mob gets loose and gives a niche in that regard.

Give Mongoose bite some scaling and maybe give survival a talent that makes it so when an attack is blocked/dodged/parried/missed that you can use it so it has some applications that aren't just solo facetanking shit.

[Natuaduck]

As far as class design goes, someone else even said it, I think it'd make more sense to fuse talents or multipurpose talents in Beast Mastery to make it fit more with "meleeing" being that you take on different aspects. The concept of "fighting along side the beast" would be very inline with Rexxar and suit the fantasy far better.

The survival tree is just that, you increase your defensive capabilities, not offensive. Traps, health, parrying, crippling and creating distance, but for some reason the "Improved Aspect of the Monkey" talent isn't in the survival tree and "Scatter Shot" is in the Marksman tree.

Overall though "melee hunter" is going to need new abilities to make it something genuinely worth while. The private server, Ascension, made something like a melee hunter allowing Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike to scale with your Ranged Attack Power as well as introducing an ability that makes both abilities apply a stacking bleed effect.

As far as talents go, I'd suggest something like:

Alter Improved Predator Aspects to give both ranged and melee attacks a chance to increase both speeds rather than Wolf being the only way to increase the melee speed. So to summarise, 5% chance to increase attack speed, meaning both ranged and melee, by 30%.

Replace Improved Aspect of the Monkey with a new talent simply called Improved Aspect of the Wolf that has 3 points and reads "Increase the Attack Power gained from Aspect of the Wolf by 10%, 20%, 30%". Simple as that. Ranged DPS is so, so much higher than melee'ing unless you use a 2H and manage to weave inbetween a ranged attack, which mind you, isn't even worth it because of the high MIN range of shooting.

Alter Thick Hide to be in line with the later versions to also improve your armor rating.

Alter Unleashed Fury to also increase your damage with melee attack by half the value. The pet gets 4%, you get 2%, per point invested in the talent.

Alter Ferocity to also increase your crit chance with melee by half the value. The pet gets 3% per point, you get 1.5%, per point invested in the talent.

Alter Bestial Discipline to ALSO generate mana on your melee attacks for 20% of the damage dealt similar to the functionality of Aspect of the Viper introduced later.

Alter Bestial Wrath to ALSO increase your damage in with melee attacks by 25% and give you half the duration.

[Cabum]

What is stopping a hunter, right now, from being a melee hunter?
I hear you, viability, lore, rexxar, aragon. Why cant hunter fit the fantasy and viability right now?

[Arkael]

What is stopping a hunter, right now, from being a melee hunter?
I hear you, viability, lore, rexxar, aragon. Why cant hunter fit the fantasy and viability right now?

The issue currently is scaling. At low levels of gear we do decently, but as our gear grows we fall off as we have a lot of down time in our rotation. Currently the rotation for melee is raptor on cooldown, feign+immolate on CD, and spam wing clip as our mana allows. The problem is using wing clip does a very small amount of damage for the mana cost (around 3% a cast) because of the slow attached to it. I would suggest either giving the playstyle a dedicated talent tree either through BM or Survival, or if they don't want to give support through talents give us our own alternate tier which augments the rotation.

My worry is that the devs don't see melee hunter in line with vanilla class fantasy, which is the line they follow when making design choices. This is false, as mentioned by Kevin Jordan in the video.

[Cabum]

I understand, we all want our class/spec to perform better. I also dont think its fair by implying devs dont care about melee hunter, or like you say "devs don't see melee hunter in line with vanilla class fantasy".
Adding a new aspect for melee and the talent to reducing raptor strike cd it means that they care.
Wingclip is not bad as a filler, you can proc quickshots, and windfury. the mana problem is up to us to manage or find a way around.
To me, this "devs dont care about melee hunter" is starting to translate to: I want to play melee hunter and be on the same lvl as rogues and warriors on the dps metter.

TLDR: We can play as melee hunter, but we want to do same dps as warrior or rogue.

[Calli]

Even this clip from Kevin Jordan shows what they were original thinking with the tree.

LOL Kevin's face says it all, he is very excited about it, that's why the long video

[Erhog]

Asking for upgrading melee hunter is like asking to make melee warlock available. Why do you want to paly a very gimped warrior while there is already a warrior and an ench sham/retri pal? Why?

[Arkael]

Asking for upgrading melee hunter is like asking to make melee warlock available. Why do you want to paly a very gimped warrior while there is already a warrior and an ench sham/retri pal? Why?

Disagree. How many melee skills does warlock have? How many does hunter have? Also, none of the melee give the fantasy that melee hunter give which is similar to rexxar or a beast lord from everquest. Being able to fight in melee with your pet is really cool and provides gameplay that the other melee do it.

[Erhog]

Warlocks have the firestone and could use lifeleech weapon which scaling by SPD plus all their curses, CC and pet to control and fight in melee. Why aren't add them a new abilities coz firestone obv designed to being used in melee? Why aren't making the Hexblade available in wow?
Hunter have melee abilities to being able to fight back in melee and breaking distance and not being completely powerless while his target in the melee zone.
If you wish to fight in melee with your pet - just do it and nobody could told you not to do so. Yes he is underpowered and the class wasn't designed to be played like another melee coz hunter is the unique phys-ranged class but why aren't skip his uniqueness to play just another semi paladin/warrior with a pet?

[Arkael]

Warlocks have the firestone and could use lifeleech weapon which scaling by SPD plus all their curses, CC and pet to control and fight in melee. Why aren't add them a new abilities coz firestone obv designed to being used in melee? Why aren't making the Hexblade available in wow?
Hunter have melee abilities to being able to fight back in melee and breaking distance and not being completely powerless while his target in the melee zone.
If you wish to fight in melee with your pet - just do it and nobody could told you not to do so. Yes he is underpowered and the class wasn't designed to be played like another melee coz hunter is the unique phys-ranged class but why aren't skip his uniqueness to play just another semi paladin/warrior with a pet?

Firestone is a offhand lol, it not a actually DPS button you press. There's no comparison.

Sure, I can and will continue to play melee that doesn't mean I can't ask for it to get some love in CC2. There's no reason why things such Balance, Ret, Ele, Enh, all get love on this server but thing like melee hunter and tank shaman don't. These specs SHOULD be the focus of the class changes. Not things that are already forming well like Fury Warrior, Combat Rogue, Fire Mage etc.