Why nerf hunters?

[Feycat]

They added spears but lowered the damage. Even steel spears are damage tier 0. And yes, we can temper/quench them... but so can people using swords and falxes. Spears are just not at all useful in most combat situations. And we can't up the damage on arrowheads. So the spear change is just a straight-up nerf to the way hunters are supposed to deal damage.

(yes, I pointed that the spear nerf was actually a hunter nerf when it was still being tested, I'm just really disappointed it went through like this.)

[cjc813]

I don't entirely agree that spear nerf == hunter nerf.

All classes used spears.

That said, Hunter spear damage was a bit OP in the before times, tbh.

Overall, I'd be ok with the spear changes if they didn't take so damn long to aim.

Getting a second shot off on a running target is pretty much not worth trying.

Spears got nerfed way too hard. They're on the verge of not being worth using.

Imo, arrow damage should have been buffed slightly, spear range and damage should have been nerfed as it was, and spear aiming time should have stayed about the same.

That would have let spears be a good mid range option while having arrows be more viable long range.

I haven't fought T4+ mobs with Hunter since the update, but I bet it's not terribly fun.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Feycat said:

Even steel spears are damage tier 0.

Seems like a potential bug/oversight. That being said, this shouldn't matter in singleplayer, since enemies don't use armor, as far as I'm aware. In a PvP situation, it may stop spears from being so powerful that they become the default weapon for both ranged and melee combat, though in fairness I'm saying that under the assumption that arrows aren't limited to tier 0. 

 

1 hour ago, Feycat said:

They added spears but lowered the damage

Not really. The initial nerf was a bit much so the devs walked most of it back, but overall, spears just got rebalanced in order to account for the new iron and steel spears getting added. The steel spear, as it stands now, does about the same damage unquenched as the old bronze spear; the player can quench iron and steel spears to boost their power though, and the first quenches are relatively low risk. The fire rate was lowered a bit as well, I think, to prevent the spear from overshadowing the bow too much when it comes to ranged combat.

As for the old scaling...sure, the devs could have kept it, but that would most likely mean that iron and steel spears end up doing around 10 damage or more per shot, and around 5-6 damage per melee hit. Potentially more if the player is allowed to quench the weapon on top of that. What that means is players default to using spears in ranged combat because the bow just cannot compete with those numbers, and the spear also becomes the default for melee since it does the same damage as the falx but at a longer range. That's not very ideal for game balance.

2 hours ago, Feycat said:

Spears are just not at all useful in most combat situations.

Spears are a solid general purpose weapon, but aren't the master of either weapons category. In melee, they're good at poking things from a safe vantage point, or otherwise keeping them at arm's length, but they don't hit so hard that the falx loses its place. In ranged combat, they hit harder per shot, which makes them good for softening up a target, as well as hunting in the early game. The main drawback is that the spear can't be fired quite as fast or as far, will cost more to replace if lost, and requires more inventory slots for multiple shots.

The main reason spears were so strong prior to 1.22 is that it was possible to rapid-fire them into targets, making them the default "best weapon" for all classes, including Blackguard, which is supposed to be bad at ranged combat. Hunter is the class built for ranged combat, which is fine, but that also means that any weapon that is a little too strong at range is going to be made even stronger from the Hunter class buffs.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Hi... hunter here...

We weren't nerfed.