On Oct. 26, Blizzard Entertainment shared what seems to be the final version of the patch notes for 10.2, and fans are urging them to make more tweaks to one class.
Looking at Patch 10.2’s changes, players on WoW’s subreddit agreed that Hunters shouldn’t go live in their current state, especially with the new Hunter’s Mark. It now provides a raid-wide buff that increases the target’s damage taken by five percent. The catch is that it only works if they have above 80 percent of their maximum health.
“Hunter’s Mark should not go live in its current form. In raid, it’s an afterthought on straight single target fights and complete ass burning a GCD on any fight involving target switching. God help us in Mythic Plus. You can sort of get around the jank by pre-casting it to avoid the 20 second CD, but then it’s just a set it and forget it boring as fuck ability. Could they really not think of any other way of giving hunters much needed utility,” explained xCAMPINGxCARLx in the comment section.
Essentially, this change doesn’t do much for Hunters, and it likely won’t make them any more desirable to bring to raids and Mythic+ dungeons—not when you can bring along more Balance Druids, Fire Mages, and Augmentation Evokers.
On top of this, fans agree that Hunters, particularly Marksmanship Hunters, are long overdue a rework. Overall, it feels like Hunters are a mediocre class at the best of times, lacking DPS output, survivability, and utility, with a pattern of wonky rotations that are either plain boring or overwhelming to deal with.
The only hope now is that Blizzard will buff Hunters in the form of hotfixes at the beginning of season three. The start of each new season is usually volatile, as Blizzard pushes out frequent hotfixes packed with changes. But, again, this wouldn’t truly solve Hunters’ problems, and it will take a lot more to make the class relevant once again in the eyes of community.
