Yeah, they are really powerful. Here's some of the things about being a hunter that are hard: 1) you have to stand still to shoot someone whereas a warrior can chase someone and white swing, 2) there is no 2. Honestly, hunters have a few downsides, but they are simply part of the class. They do not have a huge number of survival abilities (even though one of their talent trees is called 'survival'), but they can survive against a heavy burst reasonably well, and with all their various snares, roots, and control mechanics, they seem an ideal partner for a druid in the 2s bracket. We started the team on thursday, and as of today we are 15-5, with 4 of those losses as "damn it... we should have won but I played retardedly at the end."

We lost to 1) warrior+rogue (I got burst really hard and got cocky when we lived through it... then I got a full duration intimidating shout into blind into sap combo after trinketing out of blind a few seconds before), 2) rogue+spriest (again... we were winning and my hunter said something like "I'm getting burst down by this rogue" which I took to mean "I need you to stun him" when he really meant "I need you to continue healing as you are... don't change," then I got a full duration AoE fear from the priest), and there two more teams I cannot remember. We lost to a mage+rogue, and it was the only match I feel that we actually lost. The other matches were all me being stupid, whereas the mage+rogue completely destroyed us without me being able to directly explain why. The only answer I can give is "my hunter got rooted" which is not really an excuse as much as an explanation: if frost nova hits someone and they cannot get out of it, frostbolts will rain death from the heavens. This team tends to destroy a lot of the more favorable compositions today, which came as a real shock to me. We beat druid+rogue, we beat priest+hunter, shamang+warrior, druid+warrior, and a good number of other rogue teams. Essentially, hunters are the anti-rogue class at the moment, though shadow step is a huge hindrance to the hunter's ability to trap and get mobile, we seem to fight through it rather well.

Okay, another thing I am finding: there is a definite trick to getting away from warriors and rogues. Forgive me here, I'm an old-time druid and I still miss the days of shifting causing the 1 second snare/root immunity. Lately, I've started recording matches of my druid, as well as my warlock, and I started noticing that when melee classes focus on me, I tend to run away in travel form until I get snared, then I do my instant "back to travel form" macro, only to be snared again. I can't believe how stupid this is of me, but I almost always prefer a timely escape to moving around in cast form; it just seems too slow to be of any real use. Anyway, I realized that I was doing too many snare breaks and it was 1) costing me too much mana and 2) not effectively getting distance on good rogues/warriors. See, shifting out of travel form is a free action, so it doesn't incur a gcd or mana cost, and it removes snares/roots just like shifting into a feral form. So, if I get my head out of my ass, I should be able to effectively roll a better timed and more mana efficient escape by first getting snared in travel form, then simply exiting travel form to remove the snare and gain a little ground on my opponent, then they will snare again and I will immediately (while their snare is on gcd) go back into travel form to break the snare and be off and running at travel form speed. Right now I'm breaking the snare and going immediately back to travel form to catch the next snare... which is dumb and probably why my warrior+druid team had so much trouble.