I recently made a post on the forums for the guild Im in about my frustrations with people crying about having multiple Hunters in an instance or raid group. I pointed out that no one ever cries if there is multiple Paladins or multiple any other dps. Here is a response that grabbed my attention right away. This is from the raid leader for most of our raid groups in the guild. Im interested in opinions/responses that my fellow Hunters might have to such post.
I love hunters. They're a great class but they're also a very annoying class too. Mainly because they are accident prone. This has nothing to do with individual skill of the player but more that things tend to go wrong with hunters.
Having it happen with one is not a big deal. However, if you're in a group with three… that's a completely different story.
I tend to think of tanking as a 'food service' role. People don't really realize why it's annoying until you do it… And some people, it just doesn't sink in even if they tank becuase it's not really their thing.
Hunters are an extremely versatile class but they have alot of problems from a DPS standpoint. I'll throw out some examples.
1. Hunters frequently misfire. Worse now that we have moving Auto Shot. This is something all Ranged DPSers have to worry about but others have to be much more inattentive to make this mistake because they have cast times, and no white damage shot.
2. Hunters have pets and very few of the hunters in our guild pay attention to their pet 100% of the time. Hunter pets do two REALLY annoying things. Stun targets with charge / abilities when the tank is trying to move the mob, also pulling threat on a mob the Tank is trying to move. And they also will aggro additional mobs if they are on the wrong target. They are basically a melee DPSer… and the hunter brings the annoyances of having Melee DPS with out the perks.
3. Trapping is easy when you have one hunter, but two and three misfires happen frequently. Learning to have contigency plans for misfires or safer ways to trap helps alot. (Scatter shot is your friend)
4. Hunters have bad interrupts. Other than Marksman who has silencing shot, hunters have no interrupt of their own. And Silencing shot isn't a short cooldown.
5. Hunters have very spiky threat, if you do not use Misdirection and Feign Death properly you will pull threat. Warlocks have the same problem but without MD or FD. That breaks down to a 15 sec cooldown for threat mitigation. Hunters have NO excuse to EVER pull threat even with a tank that has no IDEA how to hold threat. Also MD is temporary threat. It needs to be used in tandem with Feign death.
The problems above only compound when you have more than one hunter in the group. Especially the pet one. It is extremely irritating when a trap breaks and one of the three pets is wailing on it when the tank could pick it up with a single move.
Warlocks are the same way really. (Mostly Demo) When a pet is not attacking the skull. In isolated cased it's not so bad… if you only have one hunter/warlock doing it every so often… but when you have a group of more than one… it can happen every pull.
That's the sort of thing that makes it rough on healers and tanks… when the control slips from their hands.
No other DPSer has the potential to cause chaos like pet classes… so it's that much more important to make sure you're not being a 'pest'. I can speak from experience from having Jums as my main for so long… You can't really do a heroic run wihtout having two or three mishaps. The best thing you can do is just acknowlege the slip up and just make sure it doesn't happen again in the same run. ESPECIALLY if there are more than one pet class in the group…
From the perspective of the DPSer in question you may say hey. I only messed up twice…. but it adds up if the whole run 10 things happened that made the tank or healer sweat. That's something I think a lot of people overlook.
When you play hunter, you need to be in the mindset that you have a hat on that is very annoying to look at. Call it an occupational hazard When you play hunter people assume you will bring problems to the table. It's up to you to prove them wrong.
Edit: And to address Takaas' point about paladins.
1. Paladins bring a great interrupt.
2. They have the ability to off heal (Mainly just the AOE heal in a pinch is enough)
3. Melee DPS means they will be close to the tank. Good news for healers.
4. No Ranged DPS mishaps. (Mistargeting and accidently breaking CC etc.)
5. They have the ability to save themselves with Bubble and Lay on hands. (Deterrence is nice… but… AOE still kills you.)
6. Paladins can AOE stun Elementals with Holy wrath. (The stun is short and usually ends up just being tank damage mitigation. Good as long as the mobs aren't trying to be moved.)
7. Cleanse Button.
Basically Paladins are the most useful (read Group friendly) Melee DPSer in the game. Rogues are a close second, followed by Enhancement Shaman. Warrior and DK… well… Sorry guys we love you and all. But it's easy for you to fall in a trance and break CC aimlessly.
Wow, Tak. Just... wow. Personally, I would ask him to belly up to the table and have him write a list just as long for how hunters benefit your raid since I personally feel pretty damn useless in that run. Have to tell you, we ran multiple hunters in last night's Blackwing run, and every single pull, we were called on to interrupt, trap, misdirect, slow the adds, etc. No other class in our group was asked to do so much.
How long have you been running with this guy? He seems to think he's running with level 20 non-raiders?
Niika said:
Wow, Tak. Just... wow. Personally, I would ask him to belly up to the table and have him write a list just as long for how hunters benefit your raid since I personally feel pretty damn useless in that run. Have to tell you, we ran multiple hunters in last night's Blackwing run, and every single pull, we were called on to interrupt, trap, misdirect, slow the adds, etc. No other class in our group was asked to do so much.
How long have you been running with this guy? He seems to think he's running with level 20 non-raiders?
This is the really sad part of this, hes basically been like a mentor to me up till Cataclysm came and he decided to volunteer to make his Warrior is main and take on the roll of main tank. Now its as if he is jealous of those of us who play our Hunters as our mains. He is constantly making comments like above and is usually harder on the Hunters in the group compared to the other dps.
After reading Tak's post I am reminded again of why I'm not jealous of people who raid. Would I LOVE to see that content? Hellz to the yizzeah I would! Am I willing to subject myself to this kind of in-game abuse in exchange for that? F NO! The WORST part about this post is that it's coming from within the guild and from the "raid leader" at that. Based on that post, there is nothing about this guy that shows leadership qualities.
If I were you and the other hunters in your guild (and I know I'm not), I'd tell this arrogant prick "Fine...run your raid with NO hunters then. We're on strike!" If the hunters in his raid are so bad, why is he giving them spots....I'll tell you why...HE NEEDS YOU/THEM!!!
If you guys keep showing up and taking his crap, he's just going to keep crapping on your class. Decide amongst yourselves if it's worth it to you to get to go along with the raid.
Guys like this make me want to puke. He probably "took one for the team" and made his warrior his main and the main tank because he know that the main tank get dibs on gear (im just going off my own, limited experiences here) while the hunters gotta roll for it like everyone else. He probably figured that not only would he gear up quicker, but he could have a power trip along the way.
Sorry, Tak. You deserve better than this.
All things related to your relationship with this guy and your guild aside, my first reaction to this is "EFFF YOU MR. LEADER." I would seriously consider telling him and the raid group to go stick it and I would proably leave. Honestly. Take your (probably one of the top 5) DPS and go somewhere else and he can get another Paladin to fill your spot. Sheesh. Saying things like,
"When you play hunter, you need to be in the mindset that you have a hat on that is very annoying to look at. Call it an occupational hazard When you play hunter people assume you will bring problems to the table. It's up to you to prove them wrong."
is pretty much the equivalent of saying, "You're <insert race or nationality here> and they are all morons, so you must be a moron." Yes, it's a little extreme considering I'm comparing it to WoW, a game, but it's how I feel when I hear people say things like that.
"You can't really do a heroic run wihtout having two or three mishaps." Are you freaking kidding me?? So he's saying that a Hunter CAN'T run a heroic without screwing something up, ever? I just can't even think of anything constructive to say to that. <sigh>
Now I've got my ranting out a little, heh, I'll say that yes, there are some bad players out there mangling Hunter priorities and trapping responsibilities, but you know what? There are bad players in every class. Hunters have so much utility that sure, it can be harder to learn how to do it all well, I can accept that. But to lump us all in together and make such sweeping generalizations seems GROSSLY short-sighted. I don't know your Leader, but from that post alone I can say I wouldn't want anything to do with him or that raid group. If he can't appreciate the beauty of a well-played Hunter because he's set in his mind (as are many, it would seem) that Hunters are just "annoying" and "things tend to go wrong with hunters," I'd let him go on existing with one fewer.
You can't really do a heroic run wihtout having two or three mishaps. The best thing you can do is just acknowlege the slip up and just make sure it doesn't happen again in the same run.
What I see is he's made a very poor generalization of hunters based upon his limited experience in Cataclysm. Sure, hunters can be accident-prone, but statements like the above are ricoculous.
This guy obviously has a bit of an ego now that he's mr. tanksauce, and feels it necessary to jump on the berate hunters bandwagon since he was likely frustrated with the cata-era hunter mechanics.
A good hunter, or hunters, should always have an available slot in a raid group, provided the group maintains a good balance of ranged and melee. Hunters bring valuable raid buffs, traps, can kite s**t, peel with ease, redirect threat, and all the while topping the meters.
If those things are bad - I don't wanna be right.
As an aside... this guy's adoration of Rets is both disturbing and unhealthy. Just sayin'.
I probably would have hit "nakkid" in my equipment manager, slapped my butt, told him to kiss it and would have left.
I have made some mistakes in runs and do see shots still going wild every now and then and have had to make a more of a focused effort to contol my tab targeting but that is on me, not the class. Since Catalog I have not been kicked out of a random group like I was before. I can CC mobs that locks and mages can't and with camo can make sure my trap gets to the right target.
It is unfortunate you have someone like that leading your guild. What a way to suck the fun out of your game.
Garwulf said:
You can't really do a heroic run wihtout having two or three mishaps. The best thing you can do is just acknowlege the slip up and just make sure it doesn't happen again in the same run.
What I see is he's made a very poor generalization of hunters based upon his limited experience in Cataclysm. Sure, hunters can be accident-prone, but statements like the above are ricoculous.
This guy obviously has a bit of an ego now that he's mr. tanksauce, and feels it necessary to jump on the berate hunters bandwagon since he was likely frustrated with the cata-era hunter mechanics.
A good hunter, or hunters, should always have an available slot in a raid group, provided the group maintains a good balance of ranged and melee. Hunters bring valuable raid buffs, traps, can kite s**t, peel with ease, redirect threat, and all the while topping the meters.
If those things are bad - I don't wanna be right.
As an aside... this guy's adoration of Rets is both disturbing and unhealthy. Just sayin'.
Actually, hes "mr. altaholic". He has one of every class. He thinks it makes him good at the game, but in my book makes him a "jack of all trades, master of none".
As for why Im around the guy, up till recently he was pretty decent. When Cata hit he got a big azz chip on his shoulder. He had pretty sound advice for Hunters (which was his main up till about half way through WotLK). Now its like Hunters are public enemy number one to him.
As for his statement of "proving myself". Ive done it time and time again. I RARELY break my own traps, DKs, Warlocks and Rogues break my traps more often then I do. When I trap something, unless someone breaks it, I keep it trapped.
I RARELY pull aggro.
My pet never goes to a target it isnt supposed to. (I use a macro that sends my pet to whatever target I Hunters Mark).
I ALWAYS Misdirect the tank.
I could go on naming stuff but it seems that no matter how good I get, I have to deal with crap like this. He never says it directly to me, but I feel none of the Hunters should have to put up with it.
Well….I have a confession on this post.
They say it takes one to know one and I know this person and the hordes of others like him who play this game.
Years ago in a land far far away while I'm guessing most of you were still bright-eyed n bushy tailed or whatever I had a guild in a MMORPG. We were small but great PvP'ers. The Archer with Life Magic was the ultimate DPSer (kinda like the Hunter in WoW used to be or so I'm told) and any Mage was basically unbeatable. We had a great mix and great guild but over time, like a year or so the game started to get 'serious' and I became a prick. I re-rolled from Archer to Mage and decided in 6 man fights or rape n pillage town raids we didn't need Archers as they would always be doing massive damage fn up the meleers and they couldn't heal and cast on the fly like a mage. By my actions as the Big Kahuna a great guild became a very bad one and we stopped having fun. I quit playing on-line games. If you're head gets that far up your ass, you need a change. I only ventured into WoW recently with absolutely no intention of ever going through or doing that crap again. I mean it's a game for ffs. How some of you have managed to play for 6 years is beyond me but if you put up with this kind of crap in any way shape or form or worse, act like the raid leader described here, it's time to reassess. This game has more content richness in it than anything I've ever seen without raids.
So anyhow, if any of you ever wonder (which I'm sure you don't) why I have such disdain for all the lifer 'serious' players, now ya know.
As for you Takaas, time to move on me thinks. On the way out , tell the raid leader that if he's going to do a post longer than War and Peace about why hunters suck he should at least use spellcheck. 'alot' drives me fn insane.
I would have been the first to reply but I held off because I got so disgusted with this raid "leader's" behavior. I googled the quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
This absolutely describes who you're with Takaas. It's no longer a game for that guy and if he wants to drag in others with him, then jump ship.
Tak, I totally want you in my guild. C'mon over any time hun. You should not have to endure that type of abuse.
Im going to add this here, just because its about the same player.
Ive gotten a form of revenge on this player. Last night some of the guild was discussing PvP. Another Hunter and I were discussing how OP Druids are. The player I mentioned in this post before this joined in. He eventually stated how he has lost his desire to PvP. This was after I was talking about how its a little easier to fight Mages because Hunters can tranq shot off their shield. Remember in a previous post I mentioned this guy only plays the OP specs in PvP? Bet you cant guess what his current fav is? You got it, a MAGE.
Takaas said:
Im going to add this here, just because its about the same player.
Ive gotten a form of revenge on this player. Last night some of the guild was discussing PvP. Another Hunter and I were discussing how OP Druids are. The player I mentioned in this post before this joined in. He eventually stated how he has lost his desire to PvP. This was after I was talking about how its a little easier to fight Mages because Hunters can tranq shot off their shield. Remember in a previous post I mentioned this guy only plays the OP specs in PvP? Bet you cant guess what his current fav is? You got it, a MAGE.
And this guy is your leader?!?!?! Talk about a 'take my ball and go home' complex. Take Niika up on her offer, Tak. You deserve better.