Blizzcon and Hunters

My name is Greg, I'm one of the lead designers of World of Warcraft. I'm a Libra. I like long walks on the beach, drinking gin, and nerfing paladins.

Ghostcrawler is my new hero.  This is just the bit pulled out of the giant Q&A that relates only to hunters.  My fabulous running commentary is in blue.

Q: When the death frost enchant first came out, I died a bit inside. We're seeing all these chance to proc on a melee attack or a spell, and I'm just wondering are hunters ever going to get a fun melee enchant, or are we going to be stuck with an upgraded version of an enchant that we've had since like patch 1.5?

A: So I have some bad news, unfortunately. For a while, you're going to be stuck. But one of the things that we're looking at going forward is sort of evaluating the scopes, because those are pretty boring right now to be frank, and we want to make the scopes cool and interesting. So if you do get one of those proc enchants coming along the line that's going to be where it comes into the game. And it will be just yours, nobody else can use it, and it'll be that cool thing.

A scope with a real use.  Actually exciting

Q: OK, hunters, Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack -- it's been in the game for a long time now. This is somewhat of a credit to you guys, you've given all the other character classes wonderful tools where a lot of hunters now no longer feel it's necessary to have a gimp to a skill like this. We all feel it's antediluvian, you know; remove it from the game, please. That way it would add more dynamic to the hunter class. Aspect of the Pack would be used in other situations.

A:The reason why Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the pack aren't like -- or that they have the daze I guess is what you're referencing -- is that if they didn't have the daze then you could just kite stuff all day long in PvE and it's also used like --

Q:you put mobs on leashes, you cannot kite stuff all day long. That is no longer true. And mobs you can kite, it's irrelevant; you could kill it anyway. Who cares?

A:I don't know, I think I'd be able to kite stuff and kill stuff solo as long as the boss doesn't hit me.

Okay first  "we"?  You and the mouse in your pocket?  The rest of us aren't belligerent idiots.  I mean good god we all know that there's good reason for the daze.  Who the let this moron roll a hunter let alone ask a question?

Q: From a technical standpoint we seem to be the only ranged class in the game that has a minimum range. This seems to come into effect quite a bit in our raids where everybody in the raid -- ICC first couple of bosses -- everybody in the raid stacks up on the boss at max hit at the edge of the hitbox, except the hunter -- you stand about five feet back and die.

A: If your raid liked you more they'd save you.

You reading that guildies !  The devs blame you for my death on a spike inside cold flame because I can't get any closer to the boss and do damage.  

Question: My question is just -- mages, warlocks, priests -- they're all ranged classes but they can stand directly in front of you and repeatedly use what would be a ranged attack. Why have hunters been singled out? Why are we not allowed to do the same thing with our bows or our guns? It makes no sense.


A: It's part of the overall flavor of the hunter class unfortunately, and it goes hand in hand with using ranged weapons. That said I'm very sympathetic to the reality on fights like Lord Marrowgar, and other bosses that have very large hit boxes -- which works to the advantage of melee because it lets you spread out -- but effectively it's subtracting from the viable range for hunters. That issue in particular is something that we've discussed addressing because it is intended to make life easier for you, not harder, and life would be easier for you on Marrowgar if you were smaller and that's just not how it's ideally going to work.

Q: Is there supposed to be any form of a balance for the fact that it is a negative to the way our class plays is that we must be at that range or our DPS goes to pretty much nothing once you get into melee. Is there going to be something that cancels that out and makes us a slightly more viable ranged class than somebody who doesn't have that negative.

A: At the same you can shoot while moving and a mage can't channel his spells while moving, so there's trade offs right? Or a rogue or a cat they can't do anything when they have to run around the room, and you can. So there's different classes have different strengths in different situations.

Hunters also have a lot of abilities to get our of melee range, that's why disengage was made as a jump away from your target kind of ability, to get away from the shadow priest standing on top of you. But pretty much any ranged class if a melee's on top of you, you know, you're not doing your highest damage, right.

Okay so how I read this is yes we know the hit box is HUGE.  Yes we realize you get stuck way outside.  No we prefer that the melee dps be happier.   They didn't address situations where we have to be stacked tight inside a mob's hit box (the Lich King fight is a prime example).  I mean I could melee but I'm pretty sure Arthas would wet his pants laughing at me. 

Frostheim from WHU managed an interview with Ghostcrawler!  Oddly its only hunter related, no dwarf questions at all.  So very unlike him.  But he did get some answers on a few major issues.