Is this the end of the line for MM hunters?

I HAVE not rushed into this blog, because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t got things wrong. Now I post and it seems that Blizz has finally achieved an apparent goal: to kill off MM hunters as a viable PVE spec.

Since day one, which would be about three years ago, I have run Draigg as MM spec. It’s the one I have enjoyed and I have levelled him from the early days in Teldresil up to 60, run the instances and then when the Burning Crusade expansion came out I took him to 70.

On the way he had acquitted himself admirably in instances, both normal and heroic, and been a King in Kara. He has the gear to prove it.

So along comes Lich King. Don’t get me wrong, I love the content, the quests, the graphics, but for MM it is an absolute pain in the butt. It would seem that if you’re going to enjoy the content as a hunter, Blizz is driving them all into BM spec.

The aggro levels have clearly been ramped up. You only have to compare how we dealt with the level 70 mobs on the Isle of Quel Denas with, say, the rampaging level 68 pseudo Vikings in the Borean Tundra and Howlin Fjord. The latter are hitting harder and are harder to kill.

That’s fine too. After all we don’t want to cream through the game content. That would be no fun, but the maths for MM hunters has gone down the toilet.

Me and my cat Bukowski are now having a hard - and to be frank - not very enjoyable time. Before I even use any heavyweight shots – arcane, steady or chimera – the cat is dropping aggro as early as the second auto shot in some cases.

The situation has been exacerbated because Blizz took away my ‘get out of jail’ card, the scatter shot, which was moved deep into the survival tree when the talents were rearranged.

So I’m constantly ending up with mobs in my grill. Yes you can try and back off with wing clip – but in many cases such is the mobs set-up that you finding yourself backing into another one behind you.

The level of skill required to manipulate your aggro, shot rotation, pet and avoidance tactics has gone completely out of the window. The mobs are just in your face, all the time. It’s just no fun. It’s exasperating.

Go BM you say? Well I don’t fancy it. I’m going to upset some folk here, but frankly I don’t think you need much skill to be BM. Your pet glues the mob to itself and you just stand there pew-pewing away without any problems.

/Yawn

MM was always a much more skilful class to use ‘in the field’, but now it is just ridiculous. Oh and yes, I do know what I’m talking about. I have a BM char, Scrumpy, who I’ve taken to level 40. It’s a walk in the park.

So what to do? Well I’m going to have to suck in hard, stable the much-loved cat and pick up a tanky animal – probably an arctic bear to go with the cub Blizz so kindly gave us all a the weekend – and see if there’s any improvement.

It's not a perfect answer, I love my dps pets. So watch this space.