Big Red Kitty has a new post up for his WoW Insider column, and in it he mentions the way Hunters as a class are perceived by the rest of the WoW player-base.
If we start spreading the gospel that hunters are a hybrid class, if we state that our crowd control skills are on a equal importance-level as our DPS, people are going to expect us to be able to Do It All The Time.
That worries us because there are a lot of hunters who Cannot Trap At All.
“We are a hybrid class!” we announce to the world.
“Yeah, but 90% of you guys couldn’t trap a statue,” will come the flamers. And they will be right.
This ties directly into what I saw last night during Group 2’s Maiden fight. It’s something I’ve noticed before, many times, but really saw come into play last night.
To set the stage, last night we had a team that included a Priest, a Warlock, a Hunter, 3 Paladins, 2 Mages and 2 Druids (both feral).
Now, I know about 3 other players fairly well, but I’ve never even met the others. When you’re guild has 280 members, it happens.
If you’ve marched to Maiden, then you know that the trash you face is mostly comprised of undead, with the occasional demon thrown into the mix.
I was not leading, I was tanking and keeping my mouth shut except to say ‘good job’, or ‘Does anyone need Golden Fish Sticks? I brought some for the healers’.
When we encountered the first of the real trash on the way to Maiden, the first thing someone suggested was for the Priest to shackle one of the undead.
The second suggestion someone made was for the Warlock to banish the demon in a 4 pull.
This progreesed for a few pulls, with some success.
When we went for the trash pull in the room with the Journal, and talk was turned to who was going to be banished, or which to shackle, the hunter plaintively said in Teamspeak, “I can trap, too.”
There was silence there for a good 5 seconds. I honestly felt bad, because you could feel the group collectively hold their breath while deciding if they wanted to risk it.
And that is a damn shame.
Yes, I think Big Red Kitty is right, when he says that the Priest and Warlock and Druid crowd controls are one button automatics, and the Hunters’ Freezing Trap takes skill, practise and understanding.
But I also think that there is a bigger issue at stake. And I think it comes down to what ways there are in game for a player to get feedback on his skills playing his or her class.
I know that in the pre-BC days, if you wanted to join a raiding guild, even one that was only doing Molten Core, it was considered a no-brainer that before you got to join, you would have to make a few instance runs with the officers first, so they could evaluate you and make sure that your skills were up to the job.
Make no mistake. This was a job interview. Your skills at playing your class were being evaluated, and bad gear could be forgiven, but if you hadn’t made the effort to learn how to use your class advantages, the dreaded ‘lrn2play’, then you didn’t make the cut.
It gave you a wake up call. If you wanted to join a guild, you knew damn good and well to practise, gear up, and prepare to strut your stuff. You wanted to wow ‘em to earn your place. And you knew everyone else already there had proven themselves too.
It’s something that, for good or ill, I just don’t see much anymore. Guilds are fighting for players. Guilds trying to fill out Kara groups are desperate for players that have any gear, so they take folks sight unseen. Many of these are just looking for phat loot, and as soon as they get geared from Kara they’re guild hopping to one of the higher progression guilds that are now trying to find other players to fill out 25 mans.
With all of the early gear instances being 5 mans, it lets folks that have only ever played the game by themselves or with their 4 friends to advance all the way up to early Kara.
And that is great, I am glad to have a ton of content that I and my friends can play without requiring 35 strangers for a chance at 1 damn Helm.
But it certainly does NOT benefit anyone that is playing a class that, on the surface at least, seems easy to play, but under the hood requires serious skills, knowledge and practise to play well in groups.
Without being in a guild with someone like BRK that offers seminars on ‘How to chain trap for fun and profit”, without a guild tryout run with Officers giving you criticism on your skill, without the feedback of your peers, and without the long winded posts of blowhards like me, where will your average Hunter… or Druid, or any other class ever learn that there can be such a greater depth of gameplay options available to them?
As things stand now… the first time a hunter hears the words ‘chain trapping’, it could be when they are standing in a hallway in Karazhan…
And at that point, no matter how badly they want to play their class well, SOMEone will remember them as being the huntard that can’t trap. And that just ain’t right.
For those that follow other blogs that I link to, this may amuse you. We wanted to know how many more elite trash patrols were wandering around a corner in Kara, and everyone was silent… and I asked in Teamspeak, “Why not see if the Priest can use Mind Vision to find out what is down there from the mobs’ point of view?” I’d read about it at Priest Power, and thought it sounded great. The Priest answered back shortly, in a totally bemused tone of voice, “It’s clear around the corner, the pat just went up the stairs.”
And it occured to me to wonder… is that the first time anyone other than a Priest ever wanted her to use Mind Vision in a raid? And was it the first time she had done so herself?
It’s stuff like that, that makes me wonder what class skills I am lacking, what deeper techniques and skillz I could be bringing to the party that I just haven’t heard of before.
And THAT, my friends, is why I keep trolling the WoW Forums, the Druid Wiki, and the blogs, looking for clues on what I may be missing.
May the day come when the conversation goes, “okay, the hunter will of course be trapping one, and we could have the priest shackle another, or the warlock could banish that demon…”
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