Future Me was right?!

When I first encountered "Future You" in Dragonblight, I was prompted to make the above comment. Everyone knows that hunters don't melee, right???

....Well, apparently they might now.

Tacked at the end of a post about the new Deterrence change was this comment:

Now long term, something we are going to explore a lot more is just plain juicing up hunter melee capabilities. You've got mail and you've even got some melee weapon strikes. If those were actually scary abilities, then a melee (or caster) class that closes with you risks taking a beating. The hunter could choose to flee or stand and fight. We're not talking about giving hunters a viable melee option (like Survival has flirted with a couple of times). But imagine your melee damage was 80% of your ranged damage. Ranged would always be preferable, but melee would be a decent last resort rather than pretty pathetic (as it is now). I want to stress that this is a long-term change, not something you'll see in the next patch or two, and I'll be the first to suggest that it may not work out. But it is an idea we're discussing.

I found this rather interesting. Hunters were supposed to be the ranged-only class, the one thing that made us unique when other classes got given pets. One of the reasons I picked a hunter in the first place was because we were ranged; I don't usually like playing up close.

However.... *if* Blizz did decide to up a hunter's melee capability, playing a hunter could change quite a bit. I'm not sure it would work - if anyone is in our melee range it would be a rogue, death knight or warrior, and they're less likely to be hurt by our physical DPS anyway - but I'd be interested to know exactly how Blizz is going to help hunters in Arena in the coming season.