My wishlist of Hunter PvP/arena fixes.

[Airwavez]

* Put Viper Sting on an 8 (or so) second cooldown.

* Remove arming time on traps and lower their cooldown (possibly to 25 seconds).

* Put Deterrence on a 3 minute cooldown. It's our only real defensive "Ice Block" type ability, and it's only useful against melee classes, and it's not guaranteed safety.

* Slightly reduce mana cost of all abilities. Our mana pool is already fragile enough.

* Give a new 4 piece set to our Gladiator sets (possibly a cooldown reduction on traps or Multi Shot)

* Give us a slower speed crossbow in Season 3 (around 3.2 speed). Hunter burst damage in arenas is mediocre compared to Shamans and other classes. We need a harder hitting ranged weapon to compensate (although that isn't compensating anything because Shamans are infinitely better than Hunters in arena).

* Reduce the Improved Stings talent down to 3 points. It isn't fair how I have to spec a 5 point talent solely for Viper Sting, the only useful sting in arenas, and it is on a 15 second cooldown, whereas Rogues have Wound and Deadly Poison. These poisons stack and have no cooldown.

* Increase the radius of Frost Trap.

* Possibly do something with our deadzone?

--

These are some of the fixes I had in mind for our gimped class in arenas (mainly 5v5s). If you run a 2345 team, there is absolutely no reason to bring a Hunter over a Shaman. The Shaman brings so much more to the table.

Thoughts?

[Harmann]

Viper Sting already is borderline OP. Don't buff it.

Here's my wishlist:

- Steady Shot not pushed back by damage
- 4pc = -5 second cooldown on Scatter Shot/Intimidation
- FD clearing snares potentially... or at least clear something.
- An armor reducing shot or a healing debuff shot
- Possibly a Dispelling shot (removes 1 effect or something) on a lengthy cooldown. Maybe just add this functionality into Tranq shot.
- Better pet HP scaling. How the hell does my Hunter partner have 13.5k hp and his pet only has like 6-7k?
- Maybe add some PvP functionality to Misdirect. A chance to remove snares... so you Misdirect your healer and fire off three shots which have a 50% chance on each shot to clear snares on him.

[Airwavez]

From a Priest's point of view, I can definately see Viper Sting being a huge pain. It has a 15 second cooldown, and we have to spec 5 points into Improved Stings for it to be truly effective.

It is by no means overpowered, though.

[Osse]

<insert melee> + druid/pala causes the most pain to me in 2v2 so here comes my wish list.

Attach similar ability to improved stings:

Stoicism Rank 2
Increases your resistance to Stun effects by an additional 10% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by an additional 30%.

I dont mind if they take the stun resist away, just make viper sting have ~30% chance to fail when you try to dispell it.

Reducing the cooldown by a few seconds wouldnt hurt either, might be a bit OP though.

Make scatter trainable and replace its place as 21 point talent with a new ability that can be used in melee range. Just something with low/zero damage that immobilizes and stops spell cast of the target for a few seconds.

Make pets scale more health from stamina and also allow them to scale dodge and resilience. 5 seconds dismiss pet is too long vs t6 warrior who will just destroy my 8-9k hp buffed pet.

Upgrade pet AI, they must be able to drop off objects. Smart players can go out of combat for almost 10 seconds in Blade's Edge arena because pets have to run down the ramps to get up/down.

Wouldnt mind a passive 110% run speed for pets either.

Arming time in traps is too long.

Replace our 4 set bonus with 5 sec reduction to FD or scatter shot.

[Hexagon]

I like these ideas:

- allow steady shot to not be pushed back by damage taken

- Eliminate the dead zone. (I don't mean allow us to shoot guns at point blank) the dead zone brings the most skilled hunter to the mercy of a frost mage, who may or may not actually have more keybindings than just frost nova and ice lance.

- Change the 4 piece gladiator bonus

- Upgrade pet AI: YES - A good player can kite my pet, even when it's dashing. ><

- Reduce mana cost on our abilities


By the way, whose bright idea was it to make an 8 second duration dispellable sting have a cooldown twice as long? At least reduce the viper sting cooldown to 8 seconds... healers can regen enough mana for about a thousand heals in those 8 extra seconds, and 3 of the 4 healing classes can dispell the sting anyway.

I would add that I think aimed shot should be trainable, because nobody uses it anyway, and the only reason to get it is so you can get to mortal shots.

There was a rumor a couple patches ago that improved feign death was going to remove all debuffs from the hunter, but it was either a haox, or bliz decided not to go forward with it.

*sigh* it would be nice, wouldn't it? :)

[Levidian]

Viper Sting already is borderline OP. Don't buff it.

Here's my wishlist:

- Steady Shot not pushed back by damage
- 4pc = -5 second cooldown on Scatter Shot/Intimidation
- FD clearing snares potentially... or at least clear something.
- An armor reducing shot or a healing debuff shot
- Possibly a Dispelling shot (removes 1 effect or something) on a lengthy cooldown. Maybe just add this functionality into Tranq shot.
- Better pet HP scaling. How the hell does my Hunter partner have 13.5k hp and his pet only has like 6-7k?
- Maybe add some PvP functionality to Misdirect. A chance to remove snares... so you Misdirect your healer and fire off three shots which have a 50% chance on each shot to clear snares on him.

-Steady shot /agree
-4pc /agree
-armor reducing shot /agree
-dispelling shot hmm I would rather have arcane shot get a damage bonus below 20%
-better pet hp scaling /agree they also should share resiliance
-PVP use for tranq shot Imo stop rage/energy gain for 3-5 seconds.

[Levidian]

From a Priest's point of view, I can definately see Viper Sting being a huge pain. It has a 15 second cooldown, and we have to spec 5 points into Improved Stings for it to be truly effective.

It is by no means overpowered, though.

Lol agree I think of it this way. The mana it takes is to offset the lack of mana we take from healers through damage :P

[Critorous]

Heres what i would suggest, i already posted this changes in some other pvp blogs and they were very well received:

- Improved cocussive shot = 20% chance PER point for a 100% chance at 5 points. This gives a nice guaranteed interrupt and a way to put some distance between us and our target, and it makes our pvp set bonus useful. Its also tier 1 so its pretty much available to any spec. 3 second stun on a 12 second cooldown, i would be happy with that.

-Make viper sting return some mana to us, maybe 30% of the mana leeched.

-Make scatter shot a trained ability, replace the 21 point talent in marks with "heavy shot" which does little damage but knocks the target at few feet back, usable at short range only.

[Airwavez]

A 3 second stun every 12 seconds would be really overpowered.

[saxscottie]

CC
Our traps need to be on a separate timers; at least our Freezing Trap needs to be separate from the rest.
The 2 second arming timer needs to be removed, or at least the trap needs to be undetectable until it is armed.
Even though I love to double trap for hard PVE pulls, Blizzard needs to fix the game mechanics so we cannot double trap and decrease the CD on Freezing Trap to 1.5 secs just like fear and polymorph.
Scatter Shot should be a learned spell, not a talent.
Wyvern Sting’s CD needs to be greatly reduced.
Wing Clip needs to do no damage.

Deadzone
As stated many times before, the dead zone needs to be removed. There is, and has never been, a reason for this and I have yet to find a Blue post outlining why Blizzard feels that this is needed. If Blizzard doesn’t want to take our deadzone away then at least allow us to move while auto shooting.

Talents
TSA needs to have its +AP increased. Plus 25 AP from level 60-70 is just sad and no other plus dmg buff in the game scales this badly. If Blizzard doesn’t want to increase the dmg make it so that the increase affects ALL damage.
Silencing Shot needs to be more like a mage's counterspell and lock targets out of the tree even if only for a fews seconds.
Pathfinding is a currently useless talent and points in this talent should make it so the hunter doesn’t get dazed when struck in combat.
Spirit Bond, in the current form, is laughable especially compared to the warlock's brother talent of soul link.
Animal handler should give the same percentage increase as the paladin Crusader Aura.
Ferocious Inspiration should be plus crit, not plus DMG.
Combat Experience needs to have its percentages doubled.
Trap Mastery and Clever Traps need to be combined.
Readiness should be moved up the tree.
Improved FD should be like the fake patch notes suggested and work like rogue's CoS


Line of Sight
LoS in arenas is the biggest problem for hunters. I understand why Blizzard put it in, however it needs to be greatly reduced. Compared to world pvp and BG pvp, arenas have a MUCH larger percentage of LoS restricted area to open field. This LoS doesn’t really help great teams, it only allows mediocre teams to get higher ratings than they deserve. The proof of this is in BG’s when a guild/guild BG happens the battles take forever, not because of LoS but because good groups protect their healer and can win battles without LoS because they know how to play their class while controlling the enemy. The LoS needs to be reduced in arenas or Blizzard needs to offer an equal number of arenas without LoS issues at all.

Pets
As stated many times, our pets health needs to scale better with our own and they should also get 40% of our resilience.
It would be nice to be able to stable more than 2 pets.
Allow a pet carrier item so we can carry 2 pets to call upon depending on the opposing team's make up.
Breeding. Allow us to breed pets in order to achieve a pet that can do abilities from more than one set of species talents.
Aspect of the Beast should be exactly that: allow us to take on an aspect of our beast/pet, whether it be dash, charge, or gore.....etc.

[Pacer]

* Put Viper Sting on an 8 (or so) second cooldown.

* Remove arming time on traps and lower their cooldown (possibly to 25 seconds).

* Put Deterrence on a 3 minute cooldown. It's our only real defensive "Ice Block" type ability, and it's only useful against melee classes, and it's not guaranteed safety.

* Slightly reduce mana cost of all abilities. Our mana pool is already fragile enough.

* Give a new 4 piece set to our Gladiator sets (possibly a cooldown reduction on traps or Multi Shot)

* Give us a slower speed crossbow in Season 3 (around 3.2 speed). Hunter burst damage in arenas is mediocre compared to Shamans and other classes. We need a harder hitting ranged weapon to compensate (although that isn't compensating anything because Shamans are infinitely better than Hunters in arena).

* Reduce the Improved Stings talent down to 3 points. It isn't fair how I have to spec a 5 point talent solely for Viper Sting, the only useful sting in arenas, and it is on a 15 second cooldown, whereas Rogues have Wound and Deadly Poison. These poisons stack and have no cooldown.

* Increase the radius of Frost Trap.

* Possibly do something with our deadzone?

--

These are some of the fixes I had in mind for our gimped class in arenas (mainly 5v5s). If you run a 2345 team, there is absolutely no reason to bring a Hunter over a Shaman. The Shaman brings so much more to the table.

Thoughts?

Most of these changes look good. I believe added changes that need to be made include:

-FD's removal of snares, perhaps add a 1-2 second period where they cannot retarget you after usage of the spell.
-Mortal Strike Shot or some form of Execute shot.
-I like your talk on the reduction of viper sting's cooldown to 8 seconds as well as and reduction of improved stings from 5 points to 3, with perhaps more utility.

Can only hope and wait till 2.3.

[Amenti]

Viper Sting is already a very powerful spell, I don't think you guys understand how quick your mana can get drained. Unlike drain mana or mana burn, viper sting is just a fire and forget type of deal. You keep doing your dmg while viper sting is ticking away on your target. I've seen my shadow priest get his mana destroyed by a hunter and priest in about 30 seconds. I could see getting some of the mana back, that seems like a pretty good deal. Reducing the CD on it though, that's stretching it a little bit IMO.

[gleamscythe]

I agree with you Amenti that is OP in the sense that you can still do damage while it's ticking. However, the major thing you're not realizing there is that it's easily cleansed off without hunters mark+scorpid pet+snake trap and additionally, we're almost never able to continue doing damage to the said target because he's just hugging a pillar.

[Harmann]

You can't buff Viper Sting, it's already insanely strong. Pacer and I played a 3v3 last night, the Shaman jumped off the BE bridge and I shit you not, we had him at 0% mana within 6 seconds. Pacer had a Sting on him as he was running across the bridge, he jumped down and got another Sting and I landed 3 Mana Burns.

If everything in the Hunter arsenal was as good as Viper Sting, they wouldn't have issues.

[Roguemonkey]

-Aimed shot removed as a talent and made into a trainable skill. It would be buffed and given a 30 second cooldown or so. The talent would be replaced with a one point clearcasting or mana regen type talent.

-Deterrence adding spell damage reduction/resists(25%?)

-FD removing snares and/or making us untargettable for a couple seconds.

-Pets given significantly higher HP and 100% of the owners resilience.

-Scorpids given dash and/or all pets given a passive move speed buff.

-Lowered mana cost for all abilities.

-Misdirect given survival utility in arena. My idea is that you would cast it on a target of your choice, and the next 3 damaging attacks hit that target instead of you.

-Trap mastery/clever traps combined into a single two point talent, "improved traps", which provides the bonuses of both talents.

-Trap arming time removed.

-Four piece set bonus replaced with something vaguely useful.

These were my ideas at least, I'm sure plenty have already been posted but oh well!

[Treisk]

Viper Sting already is borderline OP. Don't buff it.

Here's my wishlist:

- Steady Shot not pushed back by damage
- 4pc = -5 second cooldown on Scatter Shot/Intimidation
- FD clearing snares potentially... or at least clear something.
- An armor reducing shot or a healing debuff shot
- Possibly a Dispelling shot (removes 1 effect or something) on a lengthy cooldown. Maybe just add this functionality into Tranq shot.
- Better pet HP scaling. How the hell does my Hunter partner have 13.5k hp and his pet only has like 6-7k?
- Maybe add some PvP functionality to Misdirect. A chance to remove snares... so you Misdirect your healer and fire off three shots which have a 50% chance on each shot to clear snares on him.

- Steady Shot, agree.
- 4pc, make Scatter 5sec off, Intim 10sec off; since Intim has twice the cooldown, give it twice the benefit.
- FD has been explored as a major option for improvement by the Hunter community times over. Giving FD 3 seconds of Snare Immunity would be fair, I think, as it would let us go in for a snare without the fear of coming out of it with one.
- I don't like the healing debuff idea, because it's a recycled solution.
- A Purge shot would be great on a 10-15sec cooldown for countering BOP/Freedom. Make it function from 0-25yd.
- HP Scaling, agree. Also add Resilience scaling.
- MD change, I agree it needs a change, but disagree with your solution. Misdirection should, in PvP, transfer the next three sources of damage taken by the Hunter to be taken by the misdirected target instead, as well as the current aggro change (For a similar idea, look at Refraction on Templar Assassin (http://www.dota-allstars.com/hero/1620/index.html) in DotA (http://www.dota-allstars.com), where it has separate positive and negative effects).

[Specineff]

I played hunter up until expansion. Most of the OP changes seem reasonable, I really hope hunters get some nice changes.

[Nitestrike]

Heres what i would suggest, i already posted this changes in some other pvp blogs and they were very well received:

- Improved cocussive shot = 20% chance PER point for a 100% chance at 5 points. This gives a nice guaranteed interrupt and a way to put some distance between us and our target, and it makes our pvp set bonus useful. Its also tier 1 so its pretty much available to any spec. 3 second stun on a 12 second cooldown, i would be happy with that.

-Make viper sting return some mana to us, maybe 30% of the mana leeched.

-Make scatter shot a trained ability, replace the 21 point talent in marks with "heavy shot" which does little damage but knocks the target at few feet back, usable at short range only.

The conc shot suggestion is extremely overpowered. Imp Conc shot is a talent that many arena hutners already use. Abilities that need the buffs are the abilities that are under used. a 3 sec stun on command would be far more overpowered then stormherald and deep thunder are now.

As for knockbacks, they tend to cause too many bugs. Thats why the unstoppable force was changed from knockback to a stun instead.

[Barre]

Make it a 1sec guaranteed stun for 5 talent points maybe?

[Algrinn]

* Put Viper Sting on an 8 (or so) second cooldown.

15 seconds definitely too long, but 8 is too short, I would say 12 seconds.
* Remove arming time on traps and lower their cooldown (possibly to 25 seconds).

Traps are pretty much ok right now imo, but I wouldn't be against a *small* reduction in cooldown.

* Put Deterrence on a 3 minute cooldown. It's our only real defensive "Ice Block" type ability, and it's only useful against melee classes, and it's not guaranteed safety.

Absolutely agree. Survivability is definitely the #1 problem that I seem to face in 5v5's. Hunters easily have the weakest form of panic-button type survivability options among any class. Given that deterrence has half the benefit of evasion, half the duration, and is talented instead of trainable, there's no reason it should have just as long of a cooldown. In addition to this we should have some form of self-dispel with feign death, not necessarily remove ALL debuffs, but maybe remove all snares/roots. Considering how easy it is to reapply most snares/roots I don't feel this would be overpowered.

* Slightly reduce mana cost of all abilities. Our mana pool is already fragile enough.

I believe our mana issues are too complex to fix with only one change. The problem stems from the combination of A) having the smallest mana pool of any mana-using class, B) having the lowest inherent regen of any mana-using class, C) being the only mana class that deals physical damage instead of magical, and D) having no form of on-demand mana recovery e.g. evocation, mana gems, life tap, shadowfiend, etc. A complex problem needs a more in-depth solution.

* Give a new 4 piece set to our Gladiator sets (possibly a cooldown reduction on traps or Multi Shot)

PLEASE let this happen. 1 sec off concussive is just a hair under 100% worthless. I would say trap cooldown reduction would be the best option, or a reduced cooldown on the 3 41-pt. talents, 2 of which are primarily for pvp (silencing shot and readiness)

* Give us a slower speed crossbow in Season 3 (around 3.2 speed). Hunter burst damage in arenas is mediocre compared to Shamans and other classes. We need a harder hitting ranged weapon to compensate (although that isn't compensating anything because Shamans are infinitely better than Hunters in arena).

I don't feel that our burst damage is overall inferior to other classes, I just think the mechanics of our class restrict our burst potential too much. Making steady shot immune to pushback would be a decent help in this department all by itself.

* Reduce the Improved Stings talent down to 3 points. It isn't fair how I have to spec a 5 point talent solely for Viper Sting, the only useful sting in arenas, and it is on a 15 second cooldown, whereas Rogues have Wound and Deadly Poison. These poisons stack and have no cooldown./quote]

Absolutely yes. For a talent whose benefit is almost solely relegated to PvP, 5 points at this point in the tree is too much. I would really like to have the full benefit of this talent but can only afford 3 points right now because it would require too large of a loss further down to get 5/5. And although this doesn't apply to arenas, I'd like to see them add some effect to Scorpid sting into this talent to make it more useful overall, maybe increase the duration since scorpid is primarily a PvE debuff

[quote]* Increase the radius of Frost Trap.

I feel frost trap is pretty well balanced in its current state. A larger radius would make it overpowered.

* Possibly do something with our deadzone?

I understand the reasoning for our being unable to use ranged weapons at melee range, but I feel that the deadzone is unnecessary. Should be 0-5 melee 5-41 ranged, there is absolutely no justification for us to be the ONLY ranged class who can be rendered completely incapable of dealing any damage at all via standing at a certain distance.

Other things I would like to see would be adapting existing skills to include some form of pvp utility. Add a PvP utility to misdirect, something along the lines of "in addition to transferring threat, the next 2 spells or abilities used on the target will be redirected to the hunter." In this way, you could use misdirect with excellent timing to absorb a potential killing blow on one of your teammates, or eat a counterspell to prevent it from hitting your healer. On a 3 minute cooldown, I don't feel that this would be overpowered. Another possibility would be add a spell interrupt with no lockout duration to distracting shot, similar to earth shock, or at least add this functionality to silencing shot, which it honestly should have had in the first place: "Interrupts the spell being cast, preventing any spell from that school from being cast for 5 sec and silencing the target for 3 sec"

[KennyEU]

Kinda nerfs it PvE wise tho.. if you MD the MT and u get 2 hits from some badass boss on you :p

[Algrinn]

well thats true, maybe instead of 2 spells/abilities it transfers debuffs or something