Hunters in Mists of Pandara

[Falkovia]

The more and more I think about the upcoming expansion, the more and more sad I become. As a few of you know, I play a hunter.

In the last expansion, the "melee battle stance" was removed from hunters even if you remove your ranged weapon, and was instead replaced with a spamming red message of "Must have a ranged weapon equipped". I used to use that for a ton of screen shots, but now I am limited to extreme close ups if I want that type of stance as I have to be melee'ing a target, in  melee range.

Now, in the upcoming expansion, hunters will no longer have melee weapons. I'm really starting to feel rp'ing on my hunter is becoming impossible. I've spent countless hours farming for Thunderfury, fist weapons from TK and Hyjal, swords and polearms and staves. And now...no melee weapons. I can't even equip my Horseman's Blade and summon my pumpkins like I have been able to for the past many years and expansions. Even worse...what about the countless off-hands that just make a outfit so worthwhile. What about my Vial of Chloroform or my Grayson's Torch? How can I lead a cave expedition if I can't hold a torch to light the way? Hunters will be the only class that can't even equip the Spring Flowers or Bouquets of Ebon or Red Roses. I can't even have a sparkler for the New Year or a Stratholm Lily on my wedding day.

I understand the purpose of it in mechanics (and I am sure the Normal realms (and possibly Blizzard) could not care less), but it just is starting to seem so unfair. I tried to post a question in the Q&A the other day concerning whether the melee slot would possibly still be transmogifiable for hunters, but it never came up. Even if it was possible, items with no stats couldn't be transmog'd, so no flowers or sparklers still.

I'm very disappointed and distraught over this change (or at least the implications of this change).

[Stonegarden]

I have to agree with you. I am actually on a non RP server and I've not heard much grumbling so far. I've done a bit myself in Guildchat, but...we're a fairly large guild, so it wasn't noticed too much.

I was watching the announcement live (well a few sec behind, I paused a bit) and I was flabbergasted when they announced it. And later on I heard that other classes are getting a similar change. Since hunters don't need melee weapons and will only be able to use/get stats from ranged items there won't be a need for Rogues and Warriors to keep a ranged slot. Meaning those 2 classes won't be able to RP Riflemen/archers. apparently Mages, Priests and Warlocks will also loose the seperate wand slot. At best this will mean I lose an extra bagspace on my casters, at the worst they won't even able to use melee weapons anymore either. It's not really the best place to post this, since Blizzard have a large enough Forum of their own to keep track of, but I do want to share it with fellow gear fans. Still working up a full list of misgivings about this change to post on the WoW forum, but I will sometime soon. I kinda suggest we all do.
Well my main is a priest, so I'll be saying a few ingame prayers that it won't come to our mutual horror image.

[Kirina]

Wow, I had not heard about this. Better take outfit pics of all my cool looking bows while I still can on Kirina....

I bet if they go through with these changes, they might lose a lot of players. I hope they reconsider and actually think about what they are doing to the game. The whole idea to have the ability to equip different weapons is to have your character slightly different than someone else's and to have a different type of fight performance. I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to limit the type of weapons for each class next - like, BE rogues can only equip daggers.... And what class, then, will use wands if mages, priests, and warlocks cannot? Do they all just disappear from game? Seems weird and wrong.

I'm still upset at the fact that Blizzard "fixed" the "bug" that allowed me to show any equipped weapon(s) while /emoting. That's about how 85% of my screenshots were staged for this site. Was that really an "exploit" to begin with? 

[Tanwen]

This is a very frustrating change for me as well.  I have two level-capped hunters (and a third on the way!) and consider their melee weapons a huge part of their outfits.  My original hunter is very rogue-like and uses fist weapons for close combat and it's very disappointing to know all of the great items I have collected will now be vendor trash.

I hope this change does not make it to live, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Ångel]

I too am frustrated over this new change.  Many of my friends (non-rp server) have been collecting full gear sets in anticipation for the transmogrification, including a hunter who spent months collecting both of A'lar's claws.  She spent nearly 3 months farming for them.  I hope that Blizzard changes their minds over this alteration, because the time many players spent collecting their accessories will all be wasted.  I myself spent an age and a half collecting the crossbow from BwL for my draenei warrior's T5 armor set.  To lose that will be a great blow.  I'll miss shooting low level undead to death in the dead scar.

[Inkuoh]

Not only that..they plan to make casters weapons too go away. We will now wear wands. WANDS?
Thats pretty kick to face for those who like good combination of lets say dagger+book or very cool looking staff (like sunwell staff). Having staff is kinda the thing of casters all the time I'm confused why are we meant to be just some harry potters all of sudden (no offense to fans).
And not to mention we just got stuff like legendary staff..why take it away all of sudden. So annoying. I heard about person who had run 2 years of molten core to get thunderfury for hunter and still hasnt gotten one. So that means that was wasted time it seems.

I dont like the direction from gameplay and RP standpoint at all..but then again I might not be playing around anyway.

[Kamalia]

I think it's great that Hunters will have their ranged weapon as their main-hand weapon now (and hope that eventually they might get to dual-wield pistols like Lord Godfrey, lol). I was pretty sad about Hunters not being able to use melee weapons and Warriors/Rogues not being able to use ranged weapons, though. I remember reading somewhere more recently, however, that Hunters will still be able to equip non-Ranged weapons for show... they just won't get any good out of them in-combat.

Yes, wands are becoming a main-hand weapon, but I don't remember reading anywhere that wands will be the *only* weapon that casters can use. There is no class in the game that is restricted to using only one weapon type. I don't think Blizzard would be so stupid as to give casters a Legendary Staff and then remove the ability for them to equip it! I think it's much more likely that wands will just become another choice for the main-hand slot, alongside the staffs and the daggers/swords. I also think it's likely that wand+book will become as awesome a combination as dagger/sword+book -- remember that it's the current ranged/relic slot that's going away, and there will still be slots for both main-hand and off-hand items.