Thoughts on Fixing Hunters

What's broken about hunters?  Well, I have to admit I personally have few complaints.  Except for Focus regen being a little slow.  The thing I love most about monks is that I'm never wanting for a button to push -- if I don't have energy, I have chi to spend, and if I don't have either, hey, Tiger Palm is free.

But this isn't about monks, this is about hunters.  And while I'd adore it if there were a button that didn't cost anything, even if it didn't do much of anything, the class doesn't really need that.

No, if the class needs anything, it needs some diversity.  The common complaint I hear right now is that the three hunter specs are too similar.  Now, I only really play Survival so I can't say if that's totally true or not, but I do know that there's an awful lot of overlap between the specs (if you count "using traps," "serpent sting," and "steady/cobra shot" as "a lot of overlap").  And from a bird's-eye point of view, all three hunter specs are "ranged DPS with pet."

So how would I change it?  Here's some thoughts.

1) I wouldn't change BM.

Beast-Masters are the quintessential hunters -- they're all about taming rare beasts and sending them into battle.  They're fine as-is.  If anything, I'd just take away a few things -- Explosive Trap and Camouflage, for example, aren't really in keeping with the "I'm a beast-tamer" flavor.

2) Make Marks petless

Marksmanship, in my opinion, should be about shooting things.  Heck, it's built right into the name.  Make them petless, give them lots of shot options, and you're basically good to go.

The only downside to this is that Marks would likely become the spec of choice for PVP.  You could get around that by denying Marks a lot of the "utility shots" that the other specs get.  Or make sure pets stay useful in PVP, I dunno.  I don't PVP so I don't have a lot of insight.

Take away all their traps and let them keep Camouflage, and they become the archetypical sniper.  Take away Deterrence and let them use Disengage a bit more often and you're basically done.  Oh, and get rid of Serpent Sting altogether.  Marks shouldn't have DoTs.

3) Turn Surv into a munter spec

What's a munter?  A melee hunter.  My vision for Survival is "rogue with pet."  Hunters, for some asinine reason, can still equip melee weapons, so give them a spec that's about melee.  Still should keep the pet, I think, because that would help solidly differentiate them from the rogues.  Camouflage would be an essential skill but don't turn it into actual stealth, again to keep them different from the rogues.

SV would use traps and poisons, just like they do now -- they'd just be in the thick of things while they did it.  Take away Disengage but keep Deterrence.  Give them back some of the old hunter tricks like Wing Clip and Mongoose Bite.  Maybe a mechanic where crits scored by the pet buff the hunter's damage or vice-versa.

Another way to keep them distinct from rogues would be to have them focus on two-handed weapons -- don't let them dual-wield.  Big axes, hammers, polearms and staves, like wild men of the woods.  (Are there still 2H agi maces?  If so, druids are the only ones who can wield them...)

Doing the above three would give current hunter players two specs that aren't too different from how hunters play now, and a third spec that would be very different.  It would introduce a lot of variety to the class and would cover just about every "hunter/ranger/woodsman" archetype to be found in worldwide mythology.

But all that's a lot of change, so here's a fourth option:

4) The tanking alternative

The other option, independent of the above three, is to turn BM into the tanking spec -- maybe give them a glyph or something, like Dark Apotheosis.  Let them manage pet cooldowns in addition to their own and have all their shots automatically transfer threat to the pet, and everything else would pretty much work as it does now.