In the most recent (and inaugural) +Cord of the Rings stream on Twitch, Cordovan discusses Hunter DPS.

https://www.twitch.tv/lotrostream/v/92047693

You can scroll t0 1:08:30 to watch it.

In response to this question; “zosojp: What about Hunters? 20% boost in actual Bullroarer is not enough. Are you going to booster them in u19?”

Essentially he (Cordovan) says; “Yes. The stuff that was seen during the first Bullroarer preview for Hunters is a partial update of what will be coming with Update 19. Even by the time we had released it (Bullroarer) last Friday one of our Devs had already done a bunch of work to further improve Hunters. It is still largely along the lines of a DPS boost. I know some folks had suggested maybe we look at self healing; perhaps we can look at that in the future, but what I have seen so far is largely focused on increasing their DPS for U19.”ge

Apparently after the Twitch stream Cordovan dropped in to the LOTRO Discord channel and engaged in conversation with Chromite Swift Paw:

Cordovan:

[10:59 AM]Followup from the livestream: There were some comments on the livestream that we’re still missing the mark on buffing Hunter in U19 due to not focusing enough on defense. There are comments echoed on the forums as well that “every other class can self-heal except Hunter” and “Hunter is the only class that can’t heal status effects other than Poison”.

Questions: 1. Do you feel this is true, that Hunters need a defense buff + more status removal effects? 2. Are these comments coming from PvP-focused players, or this this a significant PvE issue as well? 3. Is it actually true that “every other class can self-heal” other than Hunter?

[11:01 AM] Lafwulf: Hunter has self heals, but not particularly good ones.

[11:01 AM] Cyke12: hunters are trash in PvP due to the fact once BAs find them they’re dead

[11:01 AM] Lafwulf: The status removal thing is a real problem though.

[11:02 AM] Cyke12: CotH is not enough for survivability

[11:02 AM] Cyke12: give it bear heals that work on percentages

[11:02 AM] Cyke12: fixed

[11:02 AM] Lafwulf: And I feel like this is coming from both PVP and PVE folks.

[11:02 AM] Cyke12: hunters are great when it comes to spider bleeds tho

[11:03 AM] Cyke12: those bleeds are poison

[11:03 AM] Cyke12: guess what hunter can remove?

[11:07 AM] Cordovan: Typically ranged-focused classes get less healing in MMOs because they strike from a distance; the point is the mobs don’t get close enough to heal them. If you give them too much self-healing, they become unbalanced in that damage becomes a nonissue + they nuke everything from a distance, so why play anything else?

[11:07 AM] Lheinel: Speaking as only having a level 53 hunter who I haven used for instances yet, I notice status effects more than actual damage,

[11:07 AM] Cyke12: In PvE (if played correctly) hunters are fine

[11:07 AM] Cyke12: In PvP however…

[11:07 AM] Lafwulf: Yeah, I always felt like hunters just needed more damage, not more defence. They should kill the enemy before they get killed themselves.

[11:08 AM] Lheinel: Hunters have self-heals in the form of Endurance stance, where quick-shot is a heal. In landscape, that’s enough for me to survive,

[11:08 AM] Cyke12: in landscape, yeah

[11:08 AM] Cyke12: but when you’re up against a BA quick shot heals won’t save you

[11:08 AM] Cyke12: plus moving target makes ranged attacks null for 10s

[11:09 AM] Cordovan: If this is a PvP-focused issue, that’s still something we can look at, but would probably come when we next focus on PvP work. If we should drop our DPS work and focus instead on Defense, I’d like to know that quickly.

[11:09 AM] Cyke12: my little r7 BA can make short work of nearly any hunter

[11:09 AM] Cyke12: regardless of rank

[11:10 AM] Lheinel: They’re asking after PvE right now

[11:10 AM] Cyke12: most commonly the complaints I see about the hunter are PvP related

[11:11 AM] Cyke12: rarely do I see someone whining about their effectiveness in PvE

[11:11 AM] Cyke12: burgs that’s understandable, they need some work

[11:11 AM] Cyke12: FMs are outdated now anyway

[11:12 AM] Chromite: Cordovan: Hunter issues: 1) Cry of the Hunter (Our get out of stun bubble) has a SUPER long animation. By the time the animation is off, our morale bubble is gone and we have taking a lot more hits. 2) Press Onward, our red line heal skill, has a LONG animation and it only heals for a percentage of our BASE morale not our current morale. This makes it really weak as a heal and also makes it so that we have to stand there getting damaged while it tries to go off. 3) We only can remove poison WITH A LONG POST ANIMATION as I said in the stream chat. All other classes can remove EVERYTHING

[11:12 AM] Chromite: DPS Work should NOT be dropped but these defensive fixes are absolutely NEEDED and should not be left by the wayside

[11:13 AM] Cordovan: Great detailed feedback Chromite, thank you very much for this.

[11:13 AM] Chromite: They are a big reason why hunters are not desired because we can’t stay alive as well as a RuneKeeper (nor dps as well)

[11:14 AM] Chromite: Cordovan: If you or any other dev wants some quick feedback please feel free to ask me. I am a lifetime hunter/ranger/etc. in every MMO I play

[11:14 AM] Cordovan: For 2) is the reason you feel you need to stand around getting damaged due to the length of the animation, or is there something else in play?

[11:14 AM] Cyke12: hmm, how about this:

[11:14 AM] Teledion: One of the probs with hunters in raid is that they have much lower dmg than rks and no real utility, like rk dnf nor survivability like they have

[11:14 AM] Cyke12: make as the result of using a skill, Press Onward’s induction is removed

[11:15 AM] Chromite: Cordovan: There’s two things wrong with Press Onward. We DO have to stand still and wait for it to go off plus it only heals a percentage of our base morale (i.e. naked morale) rather than the morale we currently have equipped. It’s a TINY heal.

[11:15 AM] Cyke12: this effect cannot be triggered every X amount of seconds/minutes

[11:15 AM] Cordovan: (I would probably leave the decision-making on how to do it to someone else, but would like to make sure I communicate the issue well to the team as soon as I can.)