A long post about World of Warcraft's Hunter class fantasy from someone that does not Main hunter, but likes the fantasy a lot.
The Hunter class fantasy, as far as the base class is concerned, has many answers. Dwarven Footmen, Elven Rangers, Hunters that hunt for sustenance, Hunters that hunt for glory and sport, and maybe some more. The specializations and Hero Talents are supposed to zone in on a more specific fantasy, but, unfortunately, we're not really getting a very cohesive fantasy at the moment for most spec/Hero combos.
Let's start with survival. The idea of survival itself, fighting in melee alongside a pet, is perfectly fine, I can even accept pulling out a shotgun at point-blank range with the Boomstick skill. But then you have...Wildfire Bombs...
BOMBS? IN MELEE RANGE?! That is the worst combination ever, and reminder that it's not just you getting hit by your bombs, but your pet as well, so even if you Disengage before every bomb, your pet is still getting exploded.
This means survival by itself isn't really giving a cohesive fantasy, but put the hero talents on top and you have more issues. Pack Leader seems off for survival, at least for me. The whole point of the spec is having a deeper and more intimate connection with your beast, fighting alongside them in melee in a storm of claw and blade. Having more beasts that just show up randomly...doesn't really work in my eyes. I guess it's fine, sure. The Melee range bombs are still problematic, but whatever, Pack leader is acceptable.
But then we have...Sentinel...oh boy...So, let's start with the simple fact that 99,99% of Sentinels use ranged weapons. Even in Warcraft 3, when they used glaives, they THREW the glaives instead of fighting in melee. The most famous Sentinel that I can think of that uses Melee was Tyrande as the Night Warrior specifically and at no other point in time. But fine, another detail that I have an issue with that we can ignore. What we cannot ignore is a Sentinel THROWING BOMBS AT THE FACE OF THEIR ENEMIES AND PETS!
They are deeply connected to nature and beasts, that doesnt mesh with explosives very much. I can't think of a single moment where a sentinel character used explosives in combat. Maybe as a trap, though they would certainly prefer non-explosive traps, or a tool, like to open a passage somewhere, but not throwing bombs at their enemies in a battle, even less in melee range.
Every possible Survival fantasy just gets muddled because of those fucking bombs. The other specs fare a little better...but not much.
Marksmanship with Sentinel is one that I think works perfectly. The Owl replaces the spotting eagle even if you decide to use pets. As of this writing, the next patch is going to reintroduce Explosive Shot to Marksmanship, which would be a similar issue as the Bombs in Survival, but while the bombs are absolutely mandatory, we should be able to just not pick explosive shot at all. Marksmanship Sentinel still works, but Explosive Shot is a concern we have to keep in mind.
Marksmanship Dark Ranger however, has issues that I find irreconcilable. The Dark Ranger fantasy is not necessarily bound by undeath, it could be just a ranger with some shadow magic, but the game mechanics have the Dark Ranger skills summoning undead minions. Having undead minions and shadow decay magic shots makes the Spotting Eagle being a living animal contradictory. No Hero talent in the Dark ranger tree replaces the eagle like the Sentinel does, and there is no glyph for the eagle to turn it undead.
And Marksmanship is not the only pleace where that contradiction presents itself. In Beast Master, the Dark Rangers tree summons Dark Hounds, undead dogs basically, but only as a percentage change on top of the normal Beast Master Dire Beast skill. This means that 90% of the time your Undead Archer is summoning ALIVE BEASTS instead of the undead ones. This simply does not compute.
In comparison, Beast Master Pack Leader works perfectly. Unlike survival's deeper bond with a single beast, Pack leader's bond with animals is stronger, having access to exotic beasts and multiple pets at once, and that justifies Pack Leader summoning extra pets sometimes.
So we managed to get 2/6 good fantasies. And one of those two has a little concern note on it. How do we fix this? Well, there are two fixes I thought of that would work.
The easist fix is mostly cosmetic: Have Marksmanship Dark Ranger replace the Eagle with an undead eagle. Have Beast Master Dark Ranger replace every Dire Beast summon with an undead beast. And modify the talent trees so that Explosive shot and Wildfire Bombs (and the Boomstick too, let's be honest) are all optional picks instead of mandatory picks. I personally would still have smaller issues with a few things after these fixes, but the egregious problems would be gone, so we can accept the smaller issues.
A more extreme fix would be switching Dark Ranger and Sentinel around between Survival and Beast Master. Beast Master Sentinel makes perfect sense, they have a deep connection to the forests and nature, and so dire beasts coming to their aid is easy to justify. Meanwhile Survival Dark Ranger works because we have more examples of dark rangers using melee than we have sentinels, and they even work better with the bombs, not caring about themselves or their pets because they're both undead, though we should still make the bombs an optional button. In this fix, Marksmanship Dark Ranger would still need to replace the Spotting Eagle, obviously, but the whole class feels more cohesive to me than just a few aesthetic changes.
The first fix sounds like something they might already be thinking and working on, but I don't expect it to happen until the Last Titan, or even later. The second fix is my "pie in the sky" dream scenario that will probably never happen.
In both fixes I still have issues with Survival Pack Leader, but unless pack leader just gets replaced with a whole different Hero tree I just gotta accept it, specially considering how well it works on Beast Master.
I would still have an issue with the explosives and bombs, at least for the Sentinel and Pack leader related fantasies, but unless we get like a tinker class that uses ranged weapons then I just gotta accept explosives as being a thing hunters use sometimes. Just...you know...don't make a bomb baseline for a melee specialization, please?!
Anyway, one last minute though that is not hunter specific: With the introduction of Devourer Demon Hunter all classes have 3 Specializations, except for druid that has 4. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple people on the dev team are thinking about eventually having all classes have 4 specializations. It would certainly be easier to balance and maintain than continue to add more classes, at least for a few years. I don't know what a fourth specialization and hero talent would look like for Hunter, but maybe this addition would be the perfect opportunity to switch Dark Ranger and/or Sentinel around like I suggested on my second fix, which means 4 specs for all is definitely a dream I will keep having.
If you read all this, thank you for your time, goodbye.
