I’ve read a few posts on other blogs recently where they complain about the minimum range for hunters. As an example, one blog complained that on the Baleroc fight, sometimes the hunter has to stand next to the crystal and its too close to dps the boss. That is given as an example of why hunter minimum range should be removed.
In that spirit, and speaking as a rogue, I think we should be able to melee from anywhere regardless of range.
For example, in the Atramedes fight during the air phase all I can do is throw knives, which is all but pointless except to keep my trinket stacks up. I think it would be much better if I could continue to melee the boss, even though it is 20 meters above my head.
In the Nefarian fight, after I have killed the demon on my platform, I have to sit there doing nothing (while the hunters can attack the boss). That’s no fun at all. If I could melee from 30 yards away then that would not be a problem.
What’s that you say? Melee from 30 yards away is unrealistic? Nonsense. Its a game. Anything that makes it more fun is of more importance than realism. Or tactics. Or strategy.
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The above was sarcasm.
Of course it would be ridiculous if I could melee from 30 yards away. Is it not equally odd to imagine a hunter firing off arrows from a range of 2 feet? (I mean, any hunter other than Legolas of course)
My point is this – sometimes in fights you might have to stop attacking. Circumstances dictate that you have a short period of the fight where you don’t do anything. Its part of the fight mechanics. Roll with it. If you’re so concerned that you have to spend a few seconds without doing damage, then maybe you’re paying too much attention to damage meters.
I get the fact that hunters are the only class with a minimum range. They also have pets who can keep attacking when the hunter is in melee range, so they aren’t totally inactive when they have to stand close to a target. The argument that “my class has XXX disadvantage that other classes do not” doesn’t fly. It implies that there should be complete homogeneity among the classes. You can’t just complain about your disadvantages while downplaying your advantages. There should be balance between them.
Forever a Noob - A WoW Rogue Blog 
Elune H. Naaru, YES! Couldn’t agree more. Different classes do different things, and SHOCKHORROR, sometimes we need to do what is right for the group, not stroking our own e-peens.
Every interrupted Vezax cast surely lowered my DPS, but that was my job. Dear raid meter monkeys, do your freaking jobs.
On an aside, I’m sure I could keep five or six glaives going at any one time, that would be an awesome thrown mechanic. *salivate*
” Is it not equally odd to imagine a hunter firing off arrows from a range of 2 feet?”
Well, why is it not odd for say, a Mage, to be 2ft from a mob and able to cast Magic Missle or somesuch damaging spell?
I don’t disagree with you that ther should be differences between classes and some balance built into each, but if I’m a Hunter with magically enhanced statistics and armor and weapons, as long as I have room to draw my bow or aim my gun/crossbow, I don’t see that it’s “odd” or unreasonable to be able to shoot the mob.
Now, I’m not going to advocate something wacky like increasing our damage at closer ranges, but the argument could be made for certain weapons! Think about how much more damage a shotgun blast to the face from TWO FEET does as opposed to one from 20 yards! But then with physics and all that, can an arrow fired from close range do more damage than one from 20 yards? I’m not ready to try and calculate that stuff, it’s too early in the morning 😉
Seriously though, I think the quotation above is not a good argument against it BUT I would say that if melee can’t attack efficiently at range, why should range be able to attack efficiently in melee? Excellent, thought provoking post, as always, thanks!
You can shoot any type of gun from close range. Crossbows work pretty darn well at melee range too. What archers with bows used to do at melee range is they used the bow as a staff and hit with that, or stabbed with the arrows, if they didn’t have an actual melee weapon at hand.
Now, this is stylistic game design decision, for hunters to have this restriction. I don’t really see it hurting them that much. In general the class is doing pretty darn well, even if they have these moments of waiting now and again.
What I do sometimes have a problem with is the hitboxes. There doesn’t seem to be a real logic to when the box is HUGE and when you have to almost stand inside your target. I’d like more consistency on that.
I play melee the most, and I hate bosses with small hit boxes – and loved the sarcasm in your post. Our roles are meant to be different, and the fact that almost all range dps can also perform well at melee is odd – but it would be a brutal change to make.
How many more dead Warlocks, Druid, Shamans, Priests, and Mages would we have if they could not cast in melee? Heaps. Consider the leveling process. Hunters typically have a pet which is expected to be in melee, where the other range generally do not. Could be a factor.
I tend to agree. We recently did Baleroc for the first time and the hunter in our group saw her damage suffer as there were times when she wasn’t able to do much more than melee.
That’s fine.
It’s part of being a hunter — as much a part as the pet and the traps and the ability to catapult yourself backwards (I love disengage). Like melee on Atramades, like arcane mages with bad luck in Valiona and Theralion. Sometimes there are fights which don’t suit your class, but *hey!* this is part of what makes your class YOUR CLASS.
The balancing act between “flavour” and “utility” is a tricky one. Go too far in one direction and you can make a class practically useless in certain situations. Go too far in the other, though, and the purpose of classes is largely lost.
My hunter is still levelling, but I think I’d resent the loss of the minimum range. It’s part of what makes playing him a change from playing my mage, or my warlock. I’d hate to lose that.
You know what i do on my hunter when we have to pile up on the boss?
Traps. Anything that does damage goes down. My pet’s attacking, of course, and…. well i do the unthinkable: i melee. Those fancy polearms have to get used sometimes, no? Sure, my DPS goes down, but it’s not stopping, and i’m not being a healing liability by being where i shouldn’t. Those are about the only times Raptor Strike gets used.
Actually it makes a lot of sense to be able to fire ranged weapons at melee range. How does it not? Bow could be a bit tricky, but guns and crossbows make complete sense.
I tend to think this limitation is lifted from D&D’s restrictions on ranged attacks, though even that can be specced out of.
When there is a phase in a fight where melee can’t hit a boss, you won’t be left home because of that. Blizzard has designed the fight like that for melee.
When there is a phase in a fight where a hunter can’t deliver his dps, then he won’t be taken for that boss. Because this time Blizzard didn’t intend this inability for a ranged to dps (like for instance a spell reflection shield would be used to do this), and it would be more benificial to take a caster who is able to keep doing damage.
In BoT or BWD there weren’t problems because almost all bosses had modified hitboxes so that we could dps them even while standing right on them. But for some reason in Firelands none of the bosses have this.
But to the point of Baleroc, it’s not a problem at all if your raid is prepared for it. The shard goes 15yards and it works if others stay far enough away from it, but it’s still an inconvenience.
Rageface, Rhyolith, Beht’tilac, Staghelm and Ragnaros give a more problems with minimum range than Baleroc.
That’s the pve side. But the big reason to remove the min range is pvp because hunters aren’t arena viable anymore. Hunter is the most played class in WoW, but it’s the least represented on the arena ladders. Nobody is blind to the change hunters need.
I’m not in a hardccore guild that would bring or leave a particular class based on specific fight mechanics, so I can’t exactly relate. However, if the hunter ends up doing comparable damage to the other ranged classes despite the downtime, wouldn’t that be reason enough to bring them?
That’s what I’m seeing now. I always see hunters at or around the top of the damage output, despite their occasional range issues.
As far as PvP, I can see it being an issue. But in PvP there is the rock-paper-scissors argument. Every class has unique advantages and disadvantages. I know that in the (very) little PvP I have done, if I got into melee range with a hunter, chances were good that I was going to hit a trap, even if Disengage was on cooldown.
Funny post! As a steadfast hunter since Vanilla, I haven’t had much issue with the minimum range in its current form. I’m sure any veteran WoW’ers recall a time when doing anything could devolve into a complicated song and dance (need I mention the ol trap dance?) – However, I think the minimum range is probably more of a concern in PvP than in PvE.
Sure, in PvE you lose some DPS; as long as the boss goes down it doesn’t really matter. In PvP however, losing DPS is going to cause you to die pretty quickly. And good opponents can get right in that dead-zone causing the PvPer no end of grief. I don’t PvP much right now (need to upgrade the ol box to handle all those fancy costumed folk running around) so I haven’t run into this very often. But when I do, it is definitely frustrating. I can see how it would be looked upon negatively by Arena goers and the like.
You’re taking this entirely from a PvE perspective. If you look at any of the top arena team compositions, you’ll almost never see a hunter in any of them. I’m not saying that this is entirely because of minimum range but if you play a melee class, all you have to do to lock down a hunter is stand on them. Any of the other ranged classes can still put pressure on their enemy while hunters can only escape. And if Disengage is on cooldown, then it’s much harder to get out of melee. Also, since our entire focus mechanic is tied to Cobra/Steady shot (you can make the argument that we still have passive focus regen but the amount we get is pitifully low), we can’t regenerate focus in melee range so that we can unload more damage once we get out of melee range.
Its true that I am looking entirely as a PvE player. In my defense, the original blog complaints that I was responding to were also about hunters in PvE.
I think that PvP is impossible to balance without homogenizing the classes. There’s no way to completely balance all of the ranged and melee classes, unless their attacks are all re-skinned versions of each other that are actually the same mechanically. As soon as there is variation, then someone will find the pros and cons of it and the class will either be overpowered or underpowered in PvP as a result.
I don’t PvP enough to speak with any authority on the subject, though, so I’ll stop there before I look foolish.
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