Eidotrope at OutDPS: To the PVE hunter, Focus can seem perfectly fine. It satisfies the costs of a rotation. It requires enough management to be interesting but not enough to be distracting. It can largely be considered a successful class change on Blizzard’s part. But many PVP hunters think otherwise. The official forums are riddled with threads about issues related to hunter PVP and almost ubiquitous among them is the complaint that Focus is fundamentally flawed in PVP. Why is this argued?
Focus is generated in three ways: passive regeneration, cooldowns and gains resulting from successful Steady and Cobra Shots. Cooldowns (Rapid Recuperation, Roar of Recovery and Fervor) are too infrequent and too finite to provide sustaining levels of Focus. The passive regeneration rate (including Thrill of the Hunt, Termination and Invigoration) is far too low to supply anything close to the Focus required for good DPS or meaningful pressure. Basically, Steadies and/or Cobras are necessary for a Focus gain rate that is adequate and sustainable. Consequently, when a hunter is prevented from firing Steady or Cobra Shots, she is prevented from maintaining levels of damage on par with other classes. This is rarely an issue in PVE thanks to Aspect of the Fox; why should PVP be any different?
The answer rests largely in the fact that by having Focus regeneration tied to our shots, our resource gains are hurt by anything that negates, slows or preempts successful shots. Examples include our minimum range, line of sight, and sources of complete mitigation like Ice Block. If a target runs within the min range: reduced to passive regen. If the target runs behind a pillar: reduced to passive regen. If the target pops a bubble: reduced to passive regen…. Read Full Article.
I totally agree with this, and I think it’s a poor design decision to give us the double penalty of killing both our dps and our resource regen at melee range. It makes it so the right move when fighting a hunter is almost always to close to melee — and it’s a poor design environment when there aren’t choices. Warrior at 20% health? Run and hide and wait for heals, or close? — Always close.
What I don’t entirely understand is… why use the word Allegedly in the title?
I suppose it was out of an impulse to not have the conclusion positioned before the argument, to not have the ruling come before the trial. Also, I’m not a top-level or even 2200+ pvper and am consequently cautious in my claims about pvp.
The solution seems so simple to me: Add focus regeneration to Raptor strike, wing clip, and other(counter attack)melee abilities. It’s a pvp boost without adding dps to pve.
I keep Roar of Recovery macro’d to my melee abilities and it works pretty good when it’s not on the long cd.
That would help with getting trained, but not the pillar humping situations Eidotrope described.
In PvE, you’d run the risk of multi-target boss fights where the right thing to do is have the hunters sit on target b/trash to get some raptor strikes to fill their focus bars, then continue dumping without using steady/cobra. For the melee regen to be worthwhile it would need to boost focus by more than the standard steady/cobra after all (especially with the cooldowns).
Personally, I think a more elegant class design would continue to remove melee abilities from hunters. After all, a ranged class shouldn’t have melee buttons. Just remove minimum range. Doesn’t solve pillar humping, but works well for many other issues (including making closing with hunters a decision, rather than always the right move).
Aspect of the Fox restores 5 focus (talented) to you every time you receive a melee attack. I didn’t see this mentioned in the article so I thought it was worth mentioning
Well, this is where the devs need to make up their minds. They give is some limited melee abilities citing we are not a melee class. So they hamstring us when it comes to our melee capabilities.
Now we have plenty of options for getting out of melee range, always have: Scatter, frost trap, freezing trap, wing clip, disengage, deterrence….these tools have always been in our arsenal.
The issue is in my book, they have allowed everyone else’s lock down moves to outweigh our own escape moves. The focus regen wouldn’t be a concern, if we could more readily get out of dodge.
Maybe this is just me speaking from the cuff (read: out my back side).