Are Hunters really THAT difficult?

[Bolty]

I've always considered Warlocks to be the most "complex" class in World of Warcraft. They have an obscene number of spells, along with multiple pets that all perform different functions. As a result, the difference between a good Warlock and a great Warlock is very substantial, moreso than say the difference between a good Priest and a great Priest. The more difficult a class is to "master," the greater the gap between the average player and the truly awesome one.

A recent thread over on the Elitist Jerks forum has me thinking, though. I quote one post in it:

Part of the reason for this specific problem, I'd gather, is that the basic shot mechanics operate on a completely different principle from any other class's combat mechanics.

There is no other class where you can completely screw yourself because you're just mashing buttons. Sure, mindlessly mashing #%@& left and right will make you look like a complete idiot when someone critiques your performance (and they'd be right) regardless of your class/spec, but with Hunters the problem is two fold:

1.) Auto-shot is everything. Interrupting your auto-attack is something that simply does not exist for any other class in the game.
2.) (OP noted this.) The mechanics are completely obfuscated within the game. There is NO explanation, NO UI implementation, and no real way beyond constantly perusing WoW-related forums to access any information relating to the BASIC FUNCTIONS OF THE CLASS.

Honestly, shot mechanics, in my opinion, are completely retarded at this point. Their initial reasoning behind Steady Shot was to negate the old-school "Slower == better" rule that made Ashjre'thul the single best Hunter weapon in the game until a much, much higher iLvl drop from a boss most people never even saw. The problem with Steady was, and is, that they screwed that up as well. Steady effectively sped up the rotations, and while that's fine, it also means you have less time to work in another shot after a Steady. That means doing your job is HARDER than it was back in the pre-2.0 days. That also means that 3.0-ish weapons are STILL the most common, which STILL isn't quite slow enough to comfortably fit in an Arcane/Multi after a Steady, and is TOO slow for BM to get their optimal rotations going. In short, their initial reasoning for Steady Shot's introduction has backfired, and resurrected the same exact problem as before, while creating another.

That also means that the difference between a theorycrafting Hunter, and some random guy who may have been a Hunter for longer than I have, but just doesn't understand/know/care about shot mechanics, is going to be absurdly massive. The shot mechanics, as they exist right now on the Live servers, are just endlessly punishing, as the OP noted.

You can take a player of any class, the best Rogue/Warrior/Shaman/Mage/Warlock/Priest/Druid/Paladin you can think of, and put them up against someone you just dropped into the class, and, while the latter SOB will get trounced, he SHOULD be at least capable enough to figure out how to mash buttons in some reasonably acceptable form, so that he's not getting demolished too badly. If you did that with a Hunter, the newbie will still get completely and utterly slaughtered, but, more than likely, he will have no clue why this is happening.

There's your "Huntard gap", as I like to call it. You've got the theorycrafting raiding Hunters, the more casual people that "get it" (and they probably understand what they do from skimming forum threads such as these), but aren't going to be able to spout off the optimal rotations/spec/gear for X, and your mouth-breathing masses that simply don't know what the hell, and, probably, don't care to. Our mouth-breathing friends probably don't understand why a Mage can DPS by mashing one button repeatedly (though not exceptionally, but you know where I'm going with this), but a Hunter can't. I'm almost certain that, when told how to play their class, or simply that "they suck", they either completely ignore this, get offended and leave, or simply just don't give a rat's ass.

Regardless of the reasons, it does nothing to help the image of the class, and it CERTAINLY doesn't help when attempting to recruit people, or explain the intricacies of the class to others. 90% of the people I talk to, even if they're experienced raiders, that don't play Hunters simply think that all we do all day is mash Steady Shot (a la our Mages) and "maybe Feign once in a while". Surely, Hunters cannot be THAT difficult to play, considering that they have "EZ Mode" with a full threat wipe every 30 seconds. I've been told, on multiple occasions, by varying and otherwise intelligent people, that they could "rape the DMs if [they] had access to Feign Death". That shows a clear misunderstanding of how we work, how Feign works, and, honestly, how little they really care about Hunters, our mechanics, or our "whiny bitching". In summary: "You get a complete threat wipe every 30 seconds. I am jealous. I want a complete threat wipe every 30 seconds. I will not get one. Thusly I will make random, overarching, baseless statements to prove my superiority over you, at least in my head, because I still beat you on DMs without that complete threat wipe every 30 seconds that I want. PS- **** Hunters."

Basically, Blizzard needs to either change the shot mechanics entirely to make them function/scale in a much more logical manner (i.e., making Haste effects not a complete pain in the ass to work with, etc.), or, at the very least, give the Huntard masses some sort of indicator inside the game that might cause what few neurons they possess to fire in such a sequence that they may, at the very least, have some sort of inkling as to why they can't even beat their tank on DMs. Until this happens, Huntards will be the most common thing in this game, unless you count naked dancing elven women.

The Hunter class is a mystery on the scale of Atlantis to most people, and all too frequently this includes those that also happen to play the class.

I played a Hunter to level 20, that was it. Never had much interest in the class. Now, I've played every class to at least level 20, just to get a taste of them. I remember being amused that of all the classes, my Hunter got to level 20 the fastest by quite a stretch (8 1/2 hours!). I can see why the class is so attractive. It's so easy to solo with them. But apparently they're reaching Warlock-level in terms of "mastering" them.

I can speak of PvP experience - there may not be many Hunters around at the level of Arenas I'm playing in, but the ones that are there are GOOD. It made me rethink my class' power against Hunters, who I traditionally dominated, because perhaps I just never played against truly great Hunter players.

Thoughts?

-Bolty