The Glade 4.0

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Holy shitsnacks!

That article is all the better for the lessons on dealing with people it contains.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Most of the huntards also stemmed from the "It's a hunter weapon" on every weapon regardless if it was good.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

To be fair, there's a legitimate argument that a hunter's melee weapon is for when they have to melee, especially when we're talking about groups prior to max level.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I am remembering pre BC, with hunters rolling on casting gear...

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

There was a time when caster gear affected some of the hunter's shots. This was changed a long time ago, but it was legit at one time...

There's a legitimately bad argument that a hunter's melee weapon is for when they have to melee. At least, from level 10 on... we don't melee. :p

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, there's a legitimately good argument for that, since you pretty frequently do have to melee while levelling.

If you think that anyone who has to melee isn't playing right either you're unbelievably lucky or you've been doing a lot of green questing to level.

There's also the subject of PVP because human players are not usually so kind as to remain at range.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Ummmm ... seeing as how I have more Level 80 Hunters than you have characters, I'm just going to go on record as saying that you're wrong on this. Our Range Abilities vastly our scale our melee abilities, even at low levels. And if you know how to manage your pets, your traps, and your pulls, you never have to melee. I tend to solo 3-4 levels above my character, including elites and multiples with 0 trouble and 0 reliance on kiting or melee.It's neither luck nor green questing. It's knowing which pets to get, how to manage your threat and pet's life, and how to manage your pulls. The class is almost as overpowered as low levels as an Affliction specced Warlock.You don't want to stay in melee, and barring Warriors and Subtlety specced Rogues, no one can close on your reliably. And even then, you have Wing Clip, Riposte, and Disenage, not to mention traps to solve that problem. The only thing that's going to trash your day is Disarms. Anyone who can Disarm, which is Priests, Other Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors, can eat your lunch with a properly timed Disarm effect. That said, you have to know to how to survive.

A Hunter's Melee weapon is a stat stick. Even if PvP I can count on my left the hand the number of times Raptor Strike has mattered. Mongoose Bite and Riposte don't require melee weapons anymore.

By the by, my last two 80 Hunter Alts made it there without dying and without grinding Greens.

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It has been awhile, but I went through a lot of levels with my hunter not dying unless I was grouped in an instance.

I did some stupid huntard tricks along the way too.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

No, I'm not wrong about this. I know that from your claim that "you never have to melee".

It's neither luck nor green questing. It's knowing which pets to get, how to manage your threat and pet's life, and how to manage your pulls. The class is almost as overpowered as low levels as an Affliction specced Warlock.[/quote]

Right, sure. Hunters are easy to play, but the fact is that you do have to melee sometimes. You cannot "manage" your way out of everything.

You don't want to stay in melee, and barring Warriors and Subtlety specced Rogues, no one can close on your reliably. And even then, you have Wing Clip, Riposte, and Disenage, not to mention traps to solve that problem. The only thing that's going to trash your day is Disarms. Anyone who can Disarm, which is Priests, Other Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors, can eat your lunch with a properly timed Disarm effect. That said, you have to know to how to survive.[/quote]

Clearly you don't want to stay in melee range, but yes, other classes can reliably stay in melee range. Yes, you have all kinds of tools to allow you to get away.. and they have all kinds of tools to make you not get away.



No, the hunter's weapon is there for melee.

If you're basing this off getting 9 or more hunters to level 80, then you're not really talking about the game as most of us play it. Sure, after playing the same class to 80 9 times, you might have it down to where you can do all this fantastic ****. Most people do not have the time or the interest to 9 characters to 80, much less 9 of the same class.

So no, it is not just a "stat stick". For most Hunter players, a melee weapon is something they have to resort to occasionally (I even remember at least one type of mob in MC where you had to stand on top of the mob).

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Lava Surgers, whose minimum charge range is 9 yards, whereas a Hunter's minimum shooting distance at the time was 6 yards. So, no, we didn't have to melee Surgers. We also didn't have to melee the Anubisath's in AQ20 and AQ40 which launched meteors, because the impact range on meteor was designed to account for a Hunter's minimum range.

A Hunter's Melee Weapon is a stat stick. And if you'd been paying attention to Cataclysm, you'd know that Mongoose Bite was removed, and Wing Clip and Raptor Strike were just re-added in the latest push. Although, to be fair, Raptor Strike is just Mongoose Bite renamed in Cataclysm. Counter Attack is still on the bubble as far as Talents go. Ghostcrawler is also on record as saying, "If we do Hunter's right this time, it's my sincere hope the class has 0 abilities that make use of a melee weapon."

It's a Stat Stick, just like a Caster's melee weapon is a Stat Stick.

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Having played a hunter for quite a while now, I'm gonna have to side with Khross on this debate. The ONLY time I melee, is a mistake, or to get those melee skills maxed for giggles.

In PvP, wing clip, but other than that, no.

Especially once you gain FD, you should never be melee'ing mobs. Only if you allow your pet to die, and even then, you should be finding a way to run away/FD to restart.

Melee is extremely weak as a hunter, and you are better off not doing it at all. If you are in a situation you think you have no range, your best bet is to set offensive traps and volley.....it will do more damage at point blank than melee.

In fact, I haven't put my melee skills on my hotbar in a very long time. I don't use them at all....

You did, indeed, have to melee if your raid leaders would not allow you to stand 6 yards away.



I have no idea what game you're playing because in the game I'm playing Cataclysm is not out yet, Mongoose bite is still there, it just refreshes constantly when its cooldown is over, as does Raptor Strike. So no, they did not remove Mongoose Bite unless you're going to try to tell me my hunter has an ability no one else's does for some reason, nor is Raptor Strike a re-named version of the same ability because it does not require that I parry or dodge or whatever it was back in the day.

If Blizzard can make it so that Hunters have no melee abilities fine, although I think that would be a mistake. That isn't, however, the case right now. It is not just a stat stick. Casters are a different story, like they are from any weapon-using class because they do damage with their abilities directly, not through a weapon. As for paying attention to Cataclysm, I've really only been paying much attention to DKs. Other than them, I'll see what we've got when we've got it.



Precisely the point. Sometimes you do make a mistake and have to melee; FD doesn't work, your pet dies, you get jumped, you need to use Wing Clip in PVP, etc. and of course you need to raise the skills, because if your skill is far below the norm for your level when you DO need to use those abilities they won't be of any use.

No one is saying Hunters should go out of their way to melee or not try to get back to ranged fighting ASAP when they have to, or that melee weapons should not be ones that have good stats for Hunters; there are plenty out there. What I'm pointing out is that when a Hunter wants to get one of those melee weapons, other classes should not be whining about it. It's really not any different than Rogue and Warriors constantly trying to push Rangers out of the lineup for melee weapons back in EQ1 on various grounds that basically amounted to "I"m a loot whore".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You really don't pay attention to Beta Information? I mentioned Cataclysm, and were you paying attention to it, you would know that Wing Clip and Raptor. You would also know that Raptor Strike is no longer Next Melee (Because they're removing all next melee attacks in Cataclysm), and that Mongoose Bite no still doesn't exist. So, maybe you should pay attention to someone's qualifiers before trying to tell them they're clueless.Except, a melee weapon still constitutes the highest single contributor to their Spellpower and Casting Stats of any item in their inventory. And, amusingly enough, a Hunter's Melee Weapon is their single largest scaling attribute item as well. We are casters that deal primarily physical damage. This is what Hunters do. Our Melee Weapon is a Stat Stick.You really need to look at itemization in end-game content then ...
Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger General
Bloodfall
Distant Land

Do you know which of those items is properly itemized for a Hunter? Do you know which of those 3 items a Feral Druid is going to take for DPS? Better yet, do you know the only time ANYONE other than a Feral DPS is going to roll against a Hunter for ANY of those weapons? And do you know what Class and Spec that is, and which of the weapons?

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Going Beast Mastery to level, there's no reason I ever had to melee as a primary damage source questing yellows-oranges the entire time. Yes, there was one-off situations where i had to wingclip and back off to keep shooting, but the melee weapon effectiveness was irrelevant.

Put it another way: if your stuck meleeing as a hunter, you've already lost. A noobie level 1 weapon won't make much difference compared to the mother of all two-handers--your damage utterly sucks with a melee weapon. A hunter melee weapon is just jewelry.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Actually, I'll put it to you this way, Diamondeye ...

My Heroic Oathbinder is the highest top end 2h in the game short of Shadowmourne, and my Raptor Strike crits hit for less than normal 2h users white damage with the Heirloom Axe (Bloodied Arcanite Reaper) in greens.

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No, I really don't care much about Beta information in ANY game, in fact even me paying attention to DK information is more interest than I normally show.

I'm not telling you you're clueless either. Like I said, Cataclysm isn't out yet and therefore, it's not pertinent to what I'm talking about. I'm sure you're absolutely correct about what will be the case when it does come out, but it isn't yet, and I'm talking about the reasons Hunters need melee weapons up to this point.



No, it's a stat melee weapon. Moreover, we are not casters that deal primarily physical damage; the damage Hunters do is based on the weapon damage of their gun, bow, or crossbow for most ranged abilities other than stings. This would be as if casters dealt spell damage based on their wand, which they don't.



Why would I look at that? I don't play endgame content, nor care to. I think you're interpreting my comments in the light of someone who is raiding, as opposed to someone who is, say, level 60 or 70 and hasn't found a decent upgrade they can afford in 10 or 15 levels.

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I don't really care. Like I said, I don't play in the endgame, nor care to. As for who would roll against who, there may be a theoretical right answer but in practice people will roll need on just about anything. Rogues are notorious for this; if it has agaility on it they treat it as a "rgous only" stamp.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Again, you seem not to understand what I'm talking about. No one is saying that Hunters should melee when they could be making ranged attacks. The melee weapon is for when you need to deliver a melee attack, especially when you are not playing at the level where you have items like that polearm.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except that you're wildly exaggerating. If you have to melee, you have not already lost, nor is it irrelevant what kind of weapon you are using. If you have to melee you (or your pet) will take more damage than you would otherwise, but it's hardly ZOMG YOU'RE GONNA LOSE!!. It is not jsut jewlery nor does your melee damage "utterly suck". It's considerably inferior to that of a melee class or to your ranged damage but it is fine when you need it.

It's a common occurance for a mob to suddenly turn and attack you when it is almost dead. At that point it makes far more sense to smack it one or two times with melee attacks to finish it off than screw around with wing clipping, deterrence, feign death, and all that jazz, especially in places where moving around is going to aggro more mobs.

As for Beast Mastery, that's fine if you're levelling in that spec. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole after trying it once. It's not much fun.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The DPS Delta between Fal'inrush (Heroic) and a Fine Light Crossbown is small. It is very small. It is 3100 damage per second in perfect conditions with perfect gear, weapon not withstanding. In other words, 85% of our damage is contingent upon everything else we're wearing in perfect circumstances. Our weapons do not scale properly, and they never have. Melee weapons are stat sticks and scale our damage output more than most ranged weapon upgrades.

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Which does not change the fact that it is, in fact, significantly affected by the weapon. 15% is not "very small"; it's a fairly large shift in damage.

As for 3100 DPS, that's a lot of damage to me. I'm not playing at the level to get, nor am I concerned with, level 284 gear. In fact, if it's not level 264 or below it might as well not be in the game as far as I'm concerned since that's the best gear you can buy with Frost Emblems. I'm not even concerned with that kind of gear for my DK, as far as I'm concerned the best weapon in the game is that thing you get from the Battered Hilt quest; anything beyond that requires a raid guild and therefore may as well not exist.

I don't think you quite get, Khross, that no matter how much a melee weapon might be a stat stick in the endgame you're evidently playing at, it defintiely is not when you're levelling, especially if you don't want to screw around with all kinds of elaborate tactics to avoid 2 or 3 rounds of melee in finishing off a mob. If it's a stat stick for you, fine,but it isn't with the tactics I use for levelling.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye:

I've leveled 11 Hunters to 80. I have 19 other 80s of the other 9 classes. And at every level of the game, my melee weapons as a Hunter are STAT STICKS. That said, you seem to misunderstand the difference between a Fal'inrush and Fine Light Crossbow in terms of you Hunter: You probably wouldn't gain damage equal to the listed DPS difference by switching between the two.

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That's fantastic Khross, I'm sure that after getting 11 hunters to 80 you have everything down to a science.

However, most people do not have 11 level 80 characters of all classes combined; in fact I'd venture to guess that more than half the player base has less than half that number.

If youre melee weapons are stat sticks at every level, all you're doing is using different tactics. When you're out doing random quests, there's no significant difference between smacking a mob that's almost dead and wing-clip-shooting it. It's a point of durability somewhere one way versus a round of ammunition the other. It still works just fine.

As for what the difference between those weapons is, I really do not care to know, and that's why I avoid raiding. The fact that the endgame might call for anyone to give a **** indicates that it's too finely tuned, and not fun to play because you're not playing, you're working.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why would you wingclip/shoot it, instead of doing a run/jump/turn and shoot it with a special attack? Or even just disengage and shoot it?

Through all the leveling with my hunter, I never found meleeing worth it, and that was even making sure that I had good weapons at every point.

For one, taking the time to keep that melee skill maxed while leveling took significant time away from anything else worthwhile. For another, it was always quicker to disengage and shoot it than it was to try to melee it, even the last few %.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.