Hunter Sugestions...

[edky]

I've been playing a hunter for awhile now, and it wasn't until recently that I discovered that they can be a very effective class - if you know how to use them right. The impression I've got from talking to other players is that they don't understand the class. They don't have much good to say about it other than "meh". They often describe it as a cross between a warrior and a mage, but weaker than both. I think it's this identity problem that is preventing a lot of them from either playing it or getting the most out of it. Dead-end and weak skills for it, namely, melee skills, are part of the blame, I think.

The melee skills are the bane to a hunters existence. They eat up endurance and provide little damage in return. The Bow is where the real damage comes from, while melee attacks clumsily interfere in getting the highest possible DPS out of the class. If you don't use melee based skills, and focus solely on building up the bow proficiency, The hunter can become as formidable as any other high damage class PC in the game.

I did several DPS tests with the hunter. When I focused solely on melee attacks, with  full warrior gear, I was doing about 286 DPS with it. When I used only projectile attack, with full hunter gear, I got a staggering 609DPS. When I did a combination of both it went down to 333DPS. To put this into perspective: My warrior, with full DPS gear, and battle stance on, did 675. Now, I could probably do higher DPS if I had a few more Hunter items - like 5 more - and a better bow. I know that Select was crowing about doing around 900DPS with his hunter at level 30, but that's probably because he has all the best hunter gear, plus bonuses from spirit bottles and refinements. Just to put this into further perspective, his mage does 970 DPS. So I don't believe that the hunter has an advantage over other classes in damage, but, it can knock out other players in seconds from a distance.

The point here is that the hunter should not be treated as a close combat class, ever. Besides the low damaging melee attacks, the hunter is as dainty as a mage when it comes to low HP and defense. Fighting up close is a death sentence. The hunter class also has no skills for added protection, like mages and priests do with their shields and healing (priest). The other skills it has to avoid damage are not very remarkable. They just promote another unfortunate stereotype about how weak the class is, and that may not be to far off from the truth. . The Hunter class does need another skill to protect itself with, in case it finds itself cornered.

Anyways, these are my recommendations and concerns for this class:

Both Rake and Rip needs to be buffed up. The damage they do is way too low. The higher levels of these skills need to produce a couple hundred more points of damage to make them more attractive to players. But, as is, no one should dump additional skill points into them, they're only useful if you have no other option in a fight. Other than that these skills are useless.

Enchant poison is a dead end skill. There really is no use for it. The hunter already has poison arrows, so he's not going to get up close to monsters, or other players, to try to poison them with a small amount of damage. I think it would better serve the hunter class if this became a detoxify skill.

The hunter needs extra protection. I was thinking that it should have something similar to what the Twigmoss Posionspitter has to reduce damage.  Good for being  surviving a few seconds more in a fight to try to try and win, or escape.     

As I said, I don't believe the hunter's DPS is out of line with other classes, but I do believe some of the bow skills can make it incredibly easy to dispatch other players in mere seconds - especially when you have full endurance. Double Strafe is one of them. I can let off 8 arrows, each doing over 700 damage each, within 6 seconds - thanks to having full endurance. I think a simple solution is to give this skill a 2-3 second cool-down. Adding a longer cool-down won't affect the current DPS much, but it will make sure that this skill won't be an instant death sentence for other players. If you don't change it, I can guarantee that Select would use it to snipe priests characters at first sight, then go after other strong players. It's what I would do and what I have been doing, hence the high kill numbers of late.

I haven't made up my mind about "Arrow barrage" yet. I think it has a bit too much time... I was thinking that each level of the skill should be given every 10 levels. For example: level 10 = level 1 to level 40 = level 4.

Other than those skills, I don't have much info on the other Bow proficiencies, other than trying max out passive skills in that branch. The pet skills... are okay, but they still seem to produce a slightly more annoying ankle biters.


I have also finished 5 bows for the game, but I'm still working on the hunter charms.... trying to figure out what they are for.

[Tobias]

Their melee skills are actually supposed to be weak. They start out fine, but they have a weaker modifier than normal skills, so they get less and less effective as you level them higher. What I want to avoid, is hunters being a class that is effective at range, and also effective at melee. When you're in melee, you want to get into range again, so you can do effective damage.

The reason hunters have these skills at all is that you don't start out with any ranged skills - you learn them through the short quest line in Saliko Village. Until then, you have to have some skills, and there the melee skills prove quite helpful. Since skill resets are extremely cheap in this game, I don't see much harm starting out with a melee skill set for a few levels, and then learning ranged skills.

Generally I like if people figure out what spells are effective. I could give them extra clues if needed (for example, melee skills not having additional levels beyond what you get at level 5), but I figured that some might want extra points in melee to have at least something while not at range. That's personal preference though. Whether people need the extra clue of melee spells having no more levels beyond level 5 is something that we have to decide. Implementing that is virtually no work for me.

I know that Select was crowing about doing around 900DPS with his hunter at level 30, but that's probably because he has all the best hunter gear, plus bonuses from spirit bottles and refinements. Just to put this into further perspective, his mage does 970 DPS.

Yeah, Select is trying to see how high he can get with hunters - and it's actually really high. That's actually really helpful - balancing hunters around a lower-than-possible figure is pretty bad, because they get boosted, and then someone comes that actually understands the class, and their damage is off the scale. 
What would be interesting is looking at the difference in gear and damage rotation of you and Select, to see if it's just gear, or something subtle that's missing.

My personal assumption is that hunters are about 30% too strong, and that figure seems to be about right. With pets he can get to 1200 DPS, which is way too high for level 32. Granted (and he said that too), that's under optional conditions: Staying at range, having the correct element, not having to move, constantly being in camouflage. That's part of the problem - hunters lack mobility, anytime they move, they severely gimp their DPS. At the same time, having to stand still and dreading to move is not a good play style either.

The Hunter class does need another skill to protect itself with, in case it finds itself cornered.

Yup, that's correct - hunters have high damage and low survivability. I would like to curb the burst damage a bit, without gimping DPS too much, and increase survivability.

I think it would better serve the hunter class if this became a detoxify skill.

That's a pretty good idea. Though I would probably make that an extra skill, branching off Enchant Poison, and making Enchant Poison more useful.

The hunter needs extra protection. I was thinking that it should have something similar to what the Twigmoss Posionspitter has to reduce damage.  Good for being  surviving a few seconds more in a fight to try to try and win, or escape.

Agreed. Though giving them too much survivability - at the moment - would be bad in PvP. If that skill is implemented, it would best buy them only a handful of seconds (3-4) if staying in melee, and effectively let them escape if they have to.

I think a simple solution is to give this skill a 2-3 second cool-down. Adding a longer cool-down won't affect the current DPS much, but it will make sure that this skill won't be an instant death sentence for other players.

Okay, let's try that. Really though, there should be another skill that hunters could use while they wait for the 2-3 seconds cooldown. This could also offset the DPS loss (which you will get) a bit.

I haven't made up my mind about "Arrow barrage" yet. I think it has a bit too much time... I was thinking that each level of the skill should be given every 10 levels. For example: level 10 = level 1 to level 40 = level 4.

Right now, it's level 1 at level 5, level 2 at level 15 ... - it's the same delta, just starting out at level 5 instead of level 1 (which is when you can get the bow skills). Not sure changing it to level 1 would do (except making it look as if I didn't know you can't get it at level 1)?

The pet skills... are okay, but they still seem to produce a slightly more annoying ankle biters.

The damage gain your pet gets should be significant, especially over a boss fight. They also become largely immune to AOEs, and gain a tank stance. Give them a try, especially now that I reduced how many skill points arrow shower and other skills use. I have also reduced the number of points traps use.

I have also finished 5 bows for the game, but I'm still working on the hunter charms.... trying to figure out what they are for.

That sounds really nice - I can't wait to see them.

[edky]

Their melee skills are actually supposed to be weak. They start out fine, but they have a weaker modifier than normal skills, so they get less and less effective as you level them higher. What I want to avoid, is hunters being a class that is effective at range, and also effective at melee. When you're in melee, you want to get into range again, so you can do effective damage.

When I started playing the hunter, I focused mostly on melee skills for it. I viewed it as a possible assassin class - or a Legolas. I wasn't discourage from making my character that way. That class has been around for awhile, yet, people didn't seem to know much about it. What people seemed to know was that it was the weakest of the 4 classes, and they often discourage others from using it because they felt it weakened the group's overall DPS. You have to ask yourself why people felt that way, before it became known that the class was insanely powerful in it's own right.

I agree that people should experiment to find out how best to use a class, but sometimes you have to club people over the head with not-to-subtle hints for them to actually "get it".  XD  And let's be realistic, it's not nearly as easy as you describe it to figure these things out. It often takes a lot of time, trial and error, as well as being high enough level to throw a bunch of points all over the place to see what sticks, and get decent data from it all. But the hunter has additional challenges over other classes that adds to these difficulties from the get go.

First, the hunter has these 3 melee skills, which combined, do very little damage, especially at higher levels - but most people who play it for the first time wouldn't know that.  Secondly, while the hunter may get the Bow early on, and go through a short tutorial to learn how to use it, there is a distinct lack of hunter items till much later on in the game, reinforcing the idea that melee combat is the only option for hunters. The next couple of bows are not even available until the BFA quest line, and most of the rest of the Hunter items can be located in the Argan region, particularly in Mona. That quite an unbalanced gap in item distribution for the hunter class.


What needs to be done is to have more Hunter items in the game, especially early on, to  give the IMPRESSION that BOW SKILLS are SUPPORTED. As for Melee skills, either increase their Damage, or combine them, because they send out a false impression, and end up being useless later on in the game. I mean, I understand your reasoning for having those melee skills for low level hunters, but you're failing to support them at higher levels.  You have to ask yourself why you should gimp your hunter by putting points into a low damage skill instead of pumping up skills that are much more effective?

[Tobias]

Fleshing out the melee skills would be an overkill, because the class already has a lot of different categories of skills to start with - from traps, to pets, to arrows. The complexity of having a combined rogue and hunter class is too high. Thus, we either make melee skills level cap earlier, or we scrap these skills entirely, and start them out with arrow skills.

However, at that point I also want to stress that, even though I asked for ideas on how to rebalance hunters, I haven't gotten anything back. Reassigning the skills from scratch will take a while, and without anyone to properly test and feedback it, I'll stick this on my long "to be eventually done" list. Keep in mind, hunters are specifically marked as "under test", and that I have never been skimping with details on how things are calculated.

Secondly, while the hunter may get the Bow early on, and go through a short tutorial to learn how to use it, there is a distinct lack of hunter items till much later on in the game, reinforcing the idea that melee combat is the only option for hunters. The next couple of bows are not even available until the BFA quest line, and most of the rest of the Hunter items can be located in the Argan region, particularly in Mona. That quite an unbalanced gap in item distribution for the hunter class.

I understand they are a bit spaced out, however:
Bows drop in the East Caves, BFA, Exiles, Monastery (4).
Warrior DPS gloves drop from Hollow Tree, Casper, Twigmoss, Monastery (4).

My further arguments are identical to what I posted not too long ago: it's easy to cry "why do you not do more!!" but my time is a limiting factor, and the help I am receiving is vanishingly small compared to the vast amount of work that needs to be done, and that I do every single day. Because you know, I just like added a new multi-stage trial with loot last week, written the quests for it, put in some more dyeable items for Ichas HM - and the new difficulty setting for it didn't just magically appear by itself either. It was beaten too, after people giving it serious attempts, so I obviously had to have tested it, and didn't just plug in random numbers. And that's just the past two weeks or so - and mind that I have been working (irl) too in that time.

My point is, as long as I do 99.9% of the work, next to having a real life job with some 50 hour weeks as well as social responsibilities, folks will have to respect the pace at which I am physically able to provide new content.
If you want to help, please, by all means, do go ahead, provide items, give proper suggestions what skills should do what with what numbers, I'll put them in. In fact, I haven't rejected anything that was properly fleshed out, so no one could ever truthfully claim that they're not helping because I don't add things they made - which I did even if some of them caused me extra work, as you may know.

[edky]

Fleshing out the melee skills would be an overkill, because the class already has a lot of different categories of skills to start with - from traps, to pets, to arrows. The complexity of having a combined rogue and hunter class is too high. Thus, we either make melee skills level cap earlier, or we scrap these skills entirely, and start them out with arrow skills.

I'm not talking about a marriage between a rogue and a hunter to make an ultimate warrior, if that is what you're thinking. And "no", fleshing out melee skills is not overkill. Pet and traps are support skills, not main class skills. Melee and projectile skills are. What I'm talking about is really no different than how you're already treating the other classes in the game. Mages can be focused on 1 of 4 elements, but weaken any one of those elements if they focus on any more than one. Warrior can choose between defense and offense, but they can't max out both, because skill points and armor/strength play a huge part in determining how effective they are in one of those areas. Even priests can choose from 2 categories, healer or pain. What I'm talking about is no different with the hunter. The hunter is in unique situation where the gear it wear will determine it's strength and weakness in a particular area.

Like I said, traps and pets are support skills, because they are infective if you try to build a character around them. It wouldn't be a bad idea if you place the pet skills in the trap section, and rename the page as "support". You would thus have more room to put in more melee skills, like a triple attack, or other skills that reflect speed and precision.

Pets are something that any class can use to add to their DPS, but they are still low damaging. Yes, pets are powered up a bit by hunter skills, but they still suffer from the same problems. They are better at attacking weak and stationary objects, and players can just run to avoid them to attack the player controlling them, thus geting rid of them in the process. Traps are only effective if you  know where to put them, and often lend to team/group support. They are also useless against many bosses that fly, or stay stationary.


I still believe that the DPS damage for hunters is within reason. But, if you believe it's not, then maybe you should give the other classes additional items that represent their characteristics, because the hunter gets extra stats with it's bow that other classes don't.

None of this stuff you have to do, or do anytime soon, they are just suggestions for you to think about.

Bows drop in the East Caves, BFA, Exiles, Monastery (4).
Warrior DPS gloves drop from Hollow Tree, Casper, Twigmoss, Monastery (4).

Could have sworn the crystalline bow dropped dropped in BFA... Doesn't really change my point much, since there are more warrior DPS gloves than you listed. Besides, I already drew up 5 bows that will be distributed across the game.   

My further arguments are identical to what I posted not too long ago: it's easy to cry "why do you not do more!!" but my time is a limiting factor, and the help I am receiving is vanishingly small compared to the vast amount of work that needs to be done, and that I do every single day.

Not a problem. Already in the pipeline, after I finish a few other things.