I’m pretty ticked off with my experiences while playing my Hunter.
What I figured would be an interesting take on the Archer class was a brutal nightmare into poorly coded AI and bad design decisions. Everything about the class is a nightmare. From the pet AI to the targetting of skills to the design of the skills (two of the same skill in separate moves (coursing and retrieve))
The Companion itself is a piece of crap, because it levels with you as level up but because of the Exp Card System you often out-level it and thus it ends up falling behind and taking tons of damage from bosses.
There’s also the issue that it takes up a character slot which is the most bullcrap thing I’ve seen in an MMO. An entire character slot is taken up by a dumb companion character. I get the idea that you can swap it around to other lower level characters but an entire slot?!? This is some kind of sick joke.
Nevermind the fact that you have to feed it to keep it useable. The stamina drain can be mitigated with Attributes invested but that still doesn’t stop it from dying and losing all its stamina and when you feed it in a dungeon or mission, it doesn’t replenish then either. Yeesh!
Skills
Coursing
This skill in particular just straight up breaks the Companion. Go ask any Hunter about their experiences using this skill anywhere and they’ll tell you how much they hate it.
-The companion will get locked in place for the full duration of the skill
-If the target moves away from the Companion, the companion will chase him always 1 step away from it.
-The Companion is constantly bugging out when using skill and often won’t take anymore commands from the Hunter, especially if this skill is used twice in a row.
-Doesn’t do anything to bosses. You can spam Rush Dog and w/e other Archer skills you have on walking bosses, but if it’s not a flying boss, you’re pretty much useless against a walking boss.
But sadly you’ve got to love it too for the crazy damage it does and the hard lockdown it gives you on stronger enemies. And yet if you go Hunter C2, there’s already a better, more reliable skill in Retrieve that does exactly the same thing as this skill.
Snatching
The one saving grace of the Hunter class is this ability. The damage put out on flying bosses is insane and pretty much makes this skill a mandatory max. Sadly it suffers from some of the same fate as Coursing and often times the Companion will not correctly target or do the skill.
-Bad targetting and AI
-The only Hunter skill aside from Pointing and Rush Dog that works on bosses.
Praise
A mild buff that gives your hunter some attack and crit rate and accuracy, but realistically you only ever use it for the Movement speed boost from the attribute. Even then, it’s barely noticeable. Not worth putting many points into.
Pointing
What the !@#% were you thinking with this skill? The pets AI goes bonkers and will run around the map ignoring you completely to stare at anything and everything, giving it a debuff of a maximum -43 accuracy and -43 evasion…that’s with 15 points invested into it. Wow! It’s literally the most useless skill I’ve ever seen in a video game. And yet it’s one of a few only useful skills a Hunter has against a walking boss. The companion will often just ignore you and cast this on tree root crystals. It’s insane that this made it into the game.
Rush Dog
The not so “saving grace” of the Hunter Class. Apparently this was really good back in the icbt days of ToS? I don’t know. Didn’t play it. I can only tell you about my experience with this skill now.
-The damage is based off your pets damage values. It’s insanely crap damage, though I’m told it ignore defense at high levels and thus a 280 max level pet can do 3k damage a shot on a boss? Not sure about this.
-The stun from the Attribute goes off the pointing animation. Not sure why this is, but ok w/e.
-The cd is 5 seconds at all levels and so it’s pretty decent but the Sp cost is pretty high.
-Once again the Companion will often just not do it on whatever you’re targetting and will hit the first thing it sees or just won’t do the skill at all if the enemy simply walks away from it.
This is the only interesting skill that Hunters get and it’s hampered by the fact that it does overall crap damage. My level 150 companion does maybe 1500 damage with it per cast. I’m fighting stuff that has 50,000 hp in dungeons.
Retrieve
Coursing lite, this skill does exactly what coursing does, only it drags the enemy towards you. This skill is a million times better than coursing though, in the fact that you can cancel the companion out of the animation by walking over it. So once it’s done it’s duty and killed whatever you ordered it to, just walk right on top of it and it will come back to it’s senses. Other than that, it’s literally the exact same skill as Coursing. Why? Why waste another skill slot on something that’s exactly the same as the coursing?
-interesting Note: If two Companions from Two Hunters use Retrieve on each other, they go flying into Orbit and won’t come back for about a minute or two.
Hounding
If you put any more than 1 point into this skill I pity you. Finding more hidden enemies would be great if it had any use outside of PVP but where are you ever going to use that? It’s one and only redeeming factor is that it unbreaks the terrible AI if it ever gets stuck from using Rush Dog or Coursing too much.
-Has an interesting issue with Retrieve where the dog will drag things with it at regular movepseed towards you. So you can drag whatever around super fast, but this often ends up prematurely ending Retrieve.
Growling
I don’t get the design decision around this skill but I can see the potential uses. It’s sadly hampered by issues with the Companion and mob AI. The solo combo potential is there but the skill comes off as kind of lacking really. Why not fear + a debuff? I don’t really have any big issues with this skill, just wish you didn’t have to take 3 circles of such an unbearably unfun class to get it.
Anyway that’s my Rant. Honestly I could still go on and list improvements but I think the entire 3 circles of Hunter need a complete rework/overhaul.
This is just not fun, not rewarding, embarrassingly bad design of a class that I would love to get my hours back on but w/e you live and learn.
tl;dr Scrap this piece of garbage class and give me back my character slots for something for more fun/useful
